I'm Officially A Tor Author!!! At Last!!!

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know that the deal with Tor happened in early March of this year. After negotiations, my agent and Tor came to an agreement on the deal to procure the As The World Dies Trilogy. The Tor versions will be released in 2011 with the first book coming out in the spring.

Even though the deal was "done," the lawyers still needed to go over the contract and work out all the fine details. The contract manager at my literary agency, Foundry Literary + Media, and my lawyer, fought to get the best contract possible for me, while, of course, the lawyers for Tor did the same thing. Finally, I got the word on Tuesday of last week that they had come to a final version of the contract.

To say the very least, I was utterly ecstatic when I got the news.


My agent let me know when she put the copies of the contract in the mail and I waited anxiously for the weekend to arrive. I was pretty sure that the contract copies would arrive on Saturday. I was leaving to run errands with my friend Kody when I dropped by the mailbox. There was a thick, white envelope waiting for me. I pulled it out and did a crazy little dance of glee. I was so damn happy. I sat in my car in the hot Texas sun and texted my mom the news. She was thrilled. This has been a shared dream between us for a very long time. We were both so happy to finally see it come into reality.




My husband had to give me a hard time, of course, pretending to toss out the contract and all that sort of thing. By his grin I could tell he was just as happy as I was to finally have the contract in my hands. If not for him, I know I would have not reached this point. It was his push toward self publishing that put me on the path to Tor.


Sunday I decided it was time to open up the package and sign the contracts. Up until this point, I wanted to just chill out until the big moment. I felt really calm about the whole process. Since the deal was made in March, to me the signing of the contract was just a formality. At least I thought that up to the moment I pulled out my super-duper special pen that my friend had given me just for this occasion. My hand wasn't shaking, but memories of my journey to this point flooded my thoughts as I started to sign my name.


I signed the first two copies while my husband and our friend Kody snapped photos. All at once, I was overwhelmed with emotion and tears started to fall. I was shocked at the sudden swell of emotion that flooded me. My husband hugged me tight and comforted me as I let the enormity of the moment sink in.

Wiping my tears away, I finished signing my contracts and filled out my form for the IRS. Grinning, I stacked up the contracts, put a rubber band around them, and did a victory dance.


I am, ladies and gentleman, officially a Tor author.


It feels awesome!