Behind the Book with Nichole Severn

Ever wondered how long it really takes a book to release from a larger publisher from query to release date? Well, I ran the numbers for my upcoming paranormal romance release, Her Fallen Protector.

I’d originally started this book in 2008. The first three chapters came fast, but other projects soon took over. I was coming to the conclusion my first suspense novel needed to be self-published after years of revisions and trying to land an agent and my second novel was begging to be written.

I wrote suspense novels at the time. Thought I would be for the rest of my career, so Her Fallen Protector got put of the back burner. It wasn’t until I moved back to Las Vegas and joined Romance Writer’s of America in 2010 that I had the inspiration to start up again.

I worked on the book steadily for a year, no other distractions. Just this paranormal romance I wasn’t sure I’d ever do anything with. The beginning of 2013 came in a hurry and I sent this book out to at least a dozen publishers, starting with the biggest, and ending at the smallest. Four months passed, a whole lot of rejection letters had built up in my inbox, and I figured this book would just have to go to my agent-assisted self publishers.

We go from there.

* April 2013 – Queried Entangled Publishing

* August 2013 – Revise and Resubmit letter from Candace Havens, requesting mostly small changes. Getting the manuscript down from 73,000 words to 70,000, tightening up some of the writing (which helped with word count), and other style changes. Nothing major at this point. Should’ve known better :)

* August 2013 – Resubmitted manuscript with changes. Took me two days. I didn’t rush, but I certainly dedicated myself to getting the manuscript back to Candace as soon as possible.

* September 2013 – Offer of contract! Yippee!

* March 2014 – January 2015 – Content edits, copy edits, proofs. These were the hardest ten months of my career. I’ve never worked with an editor like Allison, someone who saw the potential in my book and fought hard to make me see it too. Took some time, as you can tell (10 months), but she won in the end and brought me around.

* January 2015 – Received cover. Sooooo pretty. Better than anything I could’ve imagined for this book.

* February 2015 – Release day!

This book killed me. Not literally, of course. Okay, almost. But I did go into hiding for about two months because my editor had me rewrite my book from beginning to end three full times. Edit four and five weren’t so bad, but still took some time.

But I’m grateful for all the hard work my editor, Allison Collins, put into this book. I can only image how frustrated she was with me because I refused to change some aspects in the book (all went in the end because I pulled my head out) and took so long to get the edits back to her. I’ve learned so much from her in such a short amount of time and I can’t believe this book is finally released!

And as is every author’s wish, I hope all that work was worth it and my readers fall in love with Jacob and Vdarra like I have.

Happy reading!