Blog tour guest, Jill Miles, with her new book

Today, I'm doing something I've never done before—participating in a blog tour. My guest is Jill Miles, whose first novel, GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI was released by Simon and Shuster on December 29.

You can get an insider's look at the road to publication by reading the series of blog entries that started here

You can even win a prize! For each tour stop you comment on, you earn an entry in a drawing that can win you a query critique from Jill's agent, Holly Root.

As you might guess, I'm interested in how Jill coped with the long delays in the publishing business and that's what I asked her about. Here's what Jill had to tell me.

Hi, Jill. Welcome and congratulations on the publication of your novel. That's a real achievement, and it takes more than good writing to get there. I know there was a fair gap between now and when you first signed with an agent. Tell me about it.

Oh wow. It's been a long time! Okay, well, I wrote the book in 2005. I held off on querying it because I was still querying another novel (that has never sold). I eventually decided to send it out in February of 2006 and an agent offered in March of 2006. From there...it was a lot of waiting. Really horrible waiting. I'm not patient in the slightest, mind you. ;) I think I was at my wits' end in March 2007, when a year had passed and no sale. My (then) agent called me and said we had a publisher interested. It took about 2 more months for everything to be figured out, but we accepted Pocket's offer. The plan was for my book to be published as an erotica trade paperback. That changed a few months later, when my editor decided they wanted to move it to mass market paperback as a regular paranormal series (and I thought that was a terrific idea and jumped on it). That meant rescheduling all the way out to January 2010.

Between that time and now, I wrote the sequel in 2008 (which comes out on January 19, 2010), and this year I did edits, copyedits, and galleys on both books. It's a long, drawn out process, but an exciting one!

What qualities of character or mindset did you use to get through that long wait? Do you have tricks to offer other writers or maybe just other people struggling for confidence and patience in tough situations?

The waiting was (and I'm not going to lie) horrible. It was awful. And I'm the type of person that tends to fixate and obsess, and I think that's a really irritating personality trait to have in this business. I wouldn't recommend it. ;) In the meantime, I wrote (I kid you not) six more novels. They're not all ready for prime time, mind you, but writing helps give you focus and feels like you've accomplished something. Plus, it never hurts to have a shelf full of things ready to dust off and send to your agent. Because of my backlog, I was able to turn in another fully completed manuscript to my publisher (which they also bought) and we have a few projects going out in the spring that are also more or less completed.

I think the big lightbulb moment I had was when I was struggling NOT to contact my agent. I kept hearing that clients did not pester agents. Clients did not call agents, or email and you were supposed to just wait for news. If someone liked your stuff, you would hear about it at some point.

And for me, that was really really hard. I worked best with a casual sort of communication, and I'm the type that likes to ask questions, so to have the idea that "Sit down and shut up" was the best way to be a client? That was rough.

It took me some time before I realized that it was *OKAY* to check in with an agent. That "Sit down and shut up" isn't necessarily the best way to be a client. That my way of thinking was a little extreme. Checking in every 2 weeks (or more often if you have some hairy stuff going on) does not make you a bad client. Coming up with nitpicky things for your agent to do, or sending her a new chapter every hour might be obnoxious. A quick email just to check in is not, however, and it keeps you on the radar.

My current agent is terrific, and even if I end up emailing her twice in the same day, she never makes me feel like I'm bugging her. I love that about her, and I'm very comfortable with our communication. And if I'm nervous about something, I email her without stressing over it. Because I can obsess over something tiny for 3 weeks, but a 2-line email from my agent immediately alleviates all stress. So - new clients. Don't be afraid to check in (really!) but just be respectful of your agent's time.

What's the one thing you like best about GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI?

You know, I love that it's a fun story. I originally started out with a serious concept for the book, but when it started to come out on the page, it was light and breezy and just fun. I enjoyed writing it so very much. That seems kind of lame and silly, I know, but I started out trying to write serious stories and they fell really flat. When I let myself be silly, I really felt it come alive.

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So there you have it, folks. From here, you can go on to the next tour stop (January 4) at Jen Hayley's blog

ETA: Remember to sign your comment if you want it to be entered in the drawing to win a crit of your query letter from Holly Root. You can just include a name at the end of the comment.