Tag: book

Music, Writing

The Call

Chrys Buckley

In light of the amazing publishing news I posted last month, I want to post about different parts of the process. Mostly, that’ll entail looking back at how I got my manuscript ready for submission, but today I want to talk about the call. It’s important to me to be as transparent as possible, especially for other writers reading this.

I was home sick from work. A bug had been rampaging through my grad program, and it was my turn. So I’d gone to bed early the night before. This was a good thing, because when I woke up, I had an email from Jill McCabe Johnson, the publisher at Wandering Aengus Press, sent the night before, asking if we could find a time for a call so she could ask me something.

After running through about fifty-three thousand possibilities, I settled on suspecting what she wanted to discuss would be something like, “We’d like to publish your book, but…” I couldn’t imagine she wanted to call me just to reject me–I remembered how when I was applying to medical school, a call meant you were getting in, and if they wanted to reject you they’d do it with an email or a notification posted in their online portal–and the need to ask me something wouldn’t likely apply to a straight-up acceptance.

Mostly, I was shocked that they could have an answer for me so quickly. I’d expected to wait until April, at least.

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Blindness and Disability, Music, Pop Culture, Science, Writing

After all the Years that I Stood There on the Sidelines Wishing for Right Now

Chrys Buckley

Sometimes your dreams come true. Your ship finally comes in. You get your turn. This is one of those times for me. I hope this will be the first of many times I get this news. Even if that does come to pass, nothing will ever feel quite like it does right now. I know that, and I’m savoring it, because it still doesn’t feel real.

About a month and a half ago, I did a thing.

Today, I get to tell you that my book manuscript won the Wandering Aengus Press prize for nonfiction, which means MY BOOK IS GETTING PUBLISHED!

We haven’t set an exact release date, but are looking at sometime next spring, perhaps next March.

I’ll have a lot of work to do for my book over the next year. I couldn’t be happier to be working with Wandering Aengus Press and their team. I worked on my manuscript, an essay collection, with their due date in mind and didn’t submit it anywhere else.

The contracts are signed, the process is underway, and most days it still doesn’t feel real. I have waited and worked for this since I was a little girl writing stories in my room.

There’s so much more to say. I plan to post lots about the process as it happens, as well as the process that led to this book and this press. So stay tuned for lots more goodies.

For now, I’m just basking in this once-in-a-lifetime feeling of this writer dreams coming true for the first time.

Chrys