The Odyssey of Getting a Novel Published

Today I'd like to welcome the amazing Mark Noce on my blog. His debut, Between Two Fires, is released today! At last! He'll be sharing with us the long journey it took to get to this point.

Thanks for having me here, Lynda! My debut historical novel, Between Two Fires, comes out today (August 23rd) with St. Martin’s Press! It’s set in medieval Wales and chronicles the life of a young woman named Branwen who must marry a man she’s never met in order to save her people.

It’s been a long road getting here, and I thought I’d lay out some of the highlights of my journey into the world of traditional publishing. Needless to say it’s been fruitful, but certainly full of as many twists and turns as a piece of fiction. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to some of you, but lots of people I share my story with are shocked to realize that it’s taken over two years for my novel to actually hit the bookshelves. It didn’t take two years to write it (that part only took a few months), but it took two years after I had already signed with my agent and my publisher!

In fact, I’ve already long since written the sequel and have that in the publisher’s hands as well, but no firm release date as of yet. So it begs the question, why does it take so long to get a book published once you’ve already written the thing and signed a contract?

I’m really lucky that my editor is also the head of the Thomas Dunne Books imprint that is publishing my book (they’re owned by St. Martin’s and Macmillan). My editor is a very cool guy and he doesn’t have to go to higher ups for approval, he’s also the boss! So that eliminates some of the red tape, but on the flip side he’s SUPER busy all the time. Because of how much is on his plate it can often take many months to get edits back for a revision or a firm date on a release, ARCs, quotes, etc. This means more patient waiting between revisions or when waiting on something else from the publisher. Six months here, another nine months there, it starts to add up after a while. So what’s an author to do?

Write, of course! I found that the best way to work through the dry spells was to write the next book or even the one after that. So the funny part is that I’ve got a total backlog of novels written, I just have to wait for the publisher to be ready for them. Not necessarily a bad scenario. I’ve found that the biggest lesson I learn along the way (so far) is to discover new levels of patience within myself, shrug off setbacks and rejections, and just keep on writing. It may sound simple, but that’s what’s gotten me here…to the day I’ve dreamed of, my novel finally landing in bookstores!

Amazon/ Amazon Kindle

Thanks again, Lynda, for having me here! I hope you all enjoy Between Two Fires. It was a long journey, but certainly a labor of love as well.

Mark Noce writes historical fiction with a passion, and eagerly reads everything from fantasy to literature. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, he’s an avid traveler and backpacker, particularly in Europe and North America. He earned his BA and MA from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he also met his beautiful wife. By day, he works as a Technical Writer, having spent much of his career at places like Google and Facebook. In addition to writing novels, he also writes short fiction online. When not reading or writing, he’s probably listening to U2, sailing his dad’s boat, or gardening with his family.
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