C.J. Miller

I wrote and emailed the synopsis for my next manuscript for HRS to my editor. She read it, provided some great feedback and questions, and emailed it back to me. This is a huge advantage I have over when I was not contracted. It gives me the opportunity to address problems before submitting my manuscript. I'm about 66,000 words into the first draft of this new book which needs to be 70,000 - 75,000 words when complete. When I'm finished writing it, I need to address issues and layer in some elements which takes a few weeks. Then a final polish and I'll be ready to submit.

I love giving books as gifts. Sometimes I buy non-fiction in a topic I know someone is interested in reading, but this year, I decided to stick to romance novels. For friends who read romance, this was an obvious choice, but for those that don't, I hope by introducing them to something new, they might love it. But romance is a huge genre. What to pick? Steamy? Sweet? Heartwarming? Suspenseful? Historical? Passionate? Once I picked the sub-genre, which book? Cowboys? Secret babies? Medical theme? I ended up with a wide selection of books across many lines and all different authors. It took me hours. Hours. I really hope my friends and family enjoy them!

I like to be in-the-know about what's going on with my fellow HRS authors: when they self-pub, when they have a new HRS coming out, where they are blog touring, and generally anything else. Mainly because I want to support them and their ventures. I think the coolest thing I've heard recently is that HRS added another author to the team! Welcome Melissa Cutler ! I can't offer much advice, as I'm new as well, but I'm thrilled for her. I know she's on Cloud 9!

When I feel my writing dragging, I need some motivation to get it moving again. Saw this on Twitter this morning: 90 Secrets of Bestselling Authors

Waiting to hear back from an editor or agent about a book can be nerve-wracking. Every writer has their own technique for dealing with wait times. At Harlequin, for queries with synopsis, I found I usually received a response within 4 months, more often around 3 months. I say usually because a couple of years ago, I did have to requery due to my submission being lost. So what did I do while I waited? I worked on the next book. I continued to read books in my targeted line, within the genre, and outside the genre. I read books on writing and revising. In the early stages of writing, when I received a response about a query, sometimes the editor included a phrase or two about why the work was rejected. I tried to understand the problems in the book and look at my current work-in-progress to see if I had made the same mistake. Often I had and this might be the reason Harlequin asks that writers not submit more than 1 manuscript to the same line at the same time: no multiple subm...