Moody to Publish UNDISCOVERED!

I’m thrilled beyond belief to announce the sale of my first solo novel, Undiscovered. Moody plans to release the book in September ’09! We’ve been negotiating the contract for the last few weeks. If you know me, you can definitely imagine how hard it was not to talk/write about it until the last details were agreed upon. But, finally, I can shout it to the world!

It’s taken nine years of writing and rejections–though I only started Undiscovered two years ago–to bring my career to this point. All praise to God for keeping me going when the sodden discouragement of rejection threatened to divert my energy from what I feel God has called me to do: write stories that show His faithfulness. Over the next couple posts, I plan to share more of the details of this last month and intriguing tidbits like why I asked my agents to counter with a smaller advance than they had suggested, what title Moody used to renamed the book, and so on. I hope you join me.

If you’ve been rejected lately, experienced a setback in life, or had a dream fall apart, my prayer is that my news will not discourage you. Instead, I want this to be an encouragement to all who persevere in the face of adversity. I recently read a snippet concerning a scientific study that said, basically, the same neurons are stimulated in our brains when we watch someone do something or when we do it ourselves. In that way, this “success” belongs to all of us.

Thank you for reading this, for keeping tabs on me, and for encouraging me on the long journey–which in all truth, has just begun. Please, if you haven’t already, sign up for the infrequent, humorous Ashberry Lane newsletter. There will soon be something tangible to win!

As for On the Threshold, the book my mother and I co-wrote, we’ll keep you posted. Honestly, we hope to announce good news soon.

Here I am with our UPS driver, Brad. You can see that I’m not excited AT ALL.

Uh-oh, got a little spaghetti on it …

Then Joshua dropped some chocolate mint ice cream on it …

And a little water splashed on it when I washed my face for bed …

And it might have gotten a wee bit crinkled when I slept with it …

But that didn’t stop me from signing it the next morning and mailing it back.

Could I really trust Timi, the UPS store employee, to safely send it on its way?

Note: I tried to “accidentally” eat Cheetos while holding it, but we only have the Baked Cheetos. Miraculously they don’t have enough grease or cheesy color to leave orange fingerprints. 🙁

*No actual contract was harmed in the taking of these photos

To follow the rest of this series, click on newer post.