From the Manuscript Morgue to the Stars

I'm delighted to be a guest on #KidLitZombieWeek2024! I'm also offering a prize of a critique, so be sure to hop over to the main site to see how to enter and also to check out all the other posts from awesome authors. You can also find info about this challenge on X. 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my We Need Diverse Books mentor, Jane Yolen, it’s that you should never give up on a manuscript. You can do the literary equivalent of cryogenically freezing it, but you also should try reviving it every so often.
 
That was the journey of my upcoming book, CLOUDS IN SPACE: NEBULAE, STARDUST, AND US, illustrated by Diāna Renžina.
 
I first wrote it back in 2014 when I was still with my first agent. She couldn’t sell it, and then she quit the business. I thought it was dead in the water. But when I signed with my second agent, I pulled it out of the morgue and we sent it off to wander the submission world.
 
It came really close this time. An editor had a Zoom chat with us to discuss the R&R (revise and resubmit), but ultimately, she passed on it and I feared I’d have to dump it into a coffin this time.
 
But, the third agent was the charm. She was able to find the perfect home for it at MIT Kids Press and it will become a real, live book on August 20 of this year!

So, don’t give up on your manuscript. After all, drafts never die. They can come back again and again…yes, just like zombies…until they finally find a home.
 
(Note: I didn’t just leave the manuscript to rot away. I would clean it off and give it new clothing every so often so that it stayed fresh—as fresh as a half-dead draft can be anyway.)