Julie Compton’s second novel, Rescuing Olivia, has been called “a pleasing hybrid of fairy tale and contemporary thriller” (Kirkus) and an “an absorbing novel, sharp, tightly plotted and sexy, with strong, believable characters and an emotional edginess that sets it apart … an absolute page-turner” (NPR affiliate WGCU’s “Florida Book Page”). The story of how her first novel, Tell No Lies … or was it Best Intentions … found an audience, is a bit unconventional, but it sure worked for Julie. – Meg

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. As a little girl, I used to lie in bed at night in my pink bedroom, with its French provincial furniture and frilly curtains and bedspread, and think up intricate plots for the melodramatic stories I had running non-stop in my head. I still have some of the spiral notebooks I filled with my over-the-top tales. (Fortunately, I think I’ve become a bit more subtle with age.)

My fiction took a bit of hiatus after I signed up for a creative writing course in college and failed to wow the teacher with my prose. I’ve always loved arguing as much as writing, though, so after I graduated with an English literature degree, I went on to law school. Ironically, it was during law school that I started to gain confidence in my writing skills. My law professors seemed to appreciate my simple, straightforward style more than my English professors ever did. But it would still be many years before I realized this style could serve me just as well in writing fiction as it did writing legal briefs.

Fast forward ten years or so. I’d been practicing law for a number of years, had married my college sweetheart and given birth to two daughters. After I had my second daughter, I decided to become a stay-at-home mom. Between nursing, changing diapers, playgroups, and watching Barney, I began to write again. I like to compare creative writing to exercise: the more you do it, the more you want to do it.

But it wasn’t until we moved to Philadelphia and I joined one of Alison Hick’s writing workshops, which used the Amherst Writers & Artists method, that I began to work in earnest on my first novel. Every Monday night, my husband came home from work and took over with our girls, and I headed out to attend my workshop. Alison gave a prompt to get our creative juices flowing, and I used the prompt to kick-start a new scene. I’d return home at the end of the evening with a few paragraphs, and then I spent the rest of the week finishing a scene, or sometimes an entire chapter. It took me three years to complete a first draft, but I loved every minute of it. It took me another three years to learn about the business side of publishing, which included not only learning about the submission process, but also the hard truth that no publisher would publish a 730 page manuscript by an unknown author. Yes, you read right. 730 pages.

I queried numerous agents and received numerous rejections, but as time went on and I became more ruthless in my editing (I chopped off about 300 pages), the rejections became more and more encouraging. Eventually, I queried agents and smaller publishers simultaneously, and finally, one of those smaller publishers offered me a contract. But here’s where the story gets good: My husband and I own a vacation rental near Daytona Beach, and I’d placed a copy of my book (at that time it was called Best Intentions) in the bottom drawer of the cabinet where we keep all the other books, DVDs, CDs, etc. for our guests to use. About eight weeks after the release, a guest read it, called me the next day to tell me she loved it and to ask if she could give the copy to someone she knew at Macmillan UK. Long story short – Best Intentions was picked up by Macmillan. It received the benefit of more editing, a new chapter, and a new title (Tell No Lies). My second novel, Rescuing Olivia, just came out this year.

Sometimes I’m hesitant to tell this story, because aspiring writers will often say, “So, in other words, you’re saying I need to buy a beach house and leave a copy of my novel in it with the hope someone in the business will read it?” Of course they’re kidding, but I do understand the sense of futility in the question. In my opinion, the lesson to take from my publishing journey is this: when luck strikes, you need to be ready for it. The novel in that cabinet was the product of many years of hard work. Had our guest come across an unpolished draft of my novel, I suspect she would have put it away and never mentioned to me that she’d seen it. – Julie