When to Walk Away

When to Walk Away A few years ago I saw an announcement for the Tony Hillerman contest. Named after the great mystery novelist, the contest has very specific rules, including where the novel must take place. The winner receives a publishing contract with St. Martins and a nice advance. With the deadline three months away, I dove in and wrote Wink of an Eye like a madwoman. But forty-thousand words into the manuscript, I realized there was no way I could complete it, have it edited, and polish it for submission in such a short time. I was not going to submit a very rough first draft. So I chucked the contest but kept the manuscript, kept working with it, hoping to submit somewhere, someday. My critique group edited the story, but I wound up shelving the book for a while as I moved on to other projects. Then two years ago at a conference, I had the opportunity to pitch to an agent. The agent loved Wink of an Eye, saying the voice had tremendous potential. But her next words made me blink. â€Å"I know I can sell this to a small press.† At the risk of sounding arrogant, I knew I could sell it to a small press. But when the agent told me to send the entire manuscript, excitement urged me to oblige. A week or so later, I received an email from the agency intern saying, yes, she loved it too! But we had a few problems. Good voice, but too much dialogue. Excessive description because it was too visual; per the intern, having readers say they can â€Å"see it as a movie† isnt a good thing. Oh, and the beginning had to change. But they loved it and knew it would sell to any number of small presses. I scratched my head at what was supposed to be my big break. A real agent wanted to represent my work. So why wasnt I doing back flips? I went to work on the suggested revisions and soon had several documents named Wink rewrite, Wink rewrite2, Wink rewrite3, and so on . . . until I said enough. Some of the changes I agreed with- like changing a passive verb- but the dialogue and descriptive imagery stayed. This story was my ba So what happened to Wink of an Eye? I submitted it to the St. Martins Press/Minotaur Books Best 1st Private Eye Novel Competition and the darn thing won. With all its dialogue and descriptive imagery and even the occasional passive voice. It will be released November 18, 2014. I knew I had something good, and I stood