Monday, August 17, 2015 / November 29, 2015 by Kaitlyn Lamb

I’ve been reviewing the contract from NRP. One thing’s for sure: I’m certainly not going to get rich from selling this book! For NRP to just recoup its expenses for editing, publishing, publicity, etc., we’ll have to sell over a thousand book. And then I don’t get much of a royalty per book after that. But to be able to see my name on the cover of a book is going to be such a thrill, I honestly don’t care about the profit margin.

The only thing that really worries me about the contract is a line that says that NRP shall have “sole determination of the book and cover design.” I don’t mind them designing the book for me but I do hope I’ll have some say in the final product. How a book looks is vital to how it is perceived.

So, I sent Nayt a list of three questions:

1. What format do they want for my written manuscript (software, font type, font size, line spacing, etc.)?

2. Do I have to get a Federal Employer ID Number? (I have no idea what one of those is.)

3. Do I really have no say in the book/cover design?

I am anxious to read Nayt’s response, especially to the third question.

I just went onto the FUMFA Book Prize page and saw that Elizabeth had not posted either of the photos I sent to her. I wonder if they weren’t good enough or if she just has not had time to post a photo, yet. Should I e-mail her and ask or let her contact me if she wants a different photo? I want to be helpful and cooperative without being an obsequious pain in the neck. A fine line to tread!

In the meantime, I just finished reading through Frozen Voices (FV) beginning to end one more time. I had some edits to make, just a few words here and there, but for the most part, I was still fairly satisfied with how the novel read. I am curious to see what the various editors (the student team and Nayt) will suggest for edits this fall. I am to turn over my manuscript to NRP by August 29, 2015. Then the fun will begin!

I’ve also begun work on my author’s questionnaire. So far, I answered the question about the description of book/statement of purpose. I enjoyed writing about what I hoped to accomplish by writing FV, although I did feel a bit dishonest. I was discussing what I planned to do after it was already done. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. It’s easy to state the purpose of the book after it’s completed versus when I first started writing it.

Anyhow, I have four more pages of questions to answer, so I’d best get to them. I told Nayt that I hoped to complete the questionnaire by the end of the month, which only gives me two more weeks.

Friday, July 24, 2015 / November 17, 2015 by Kaitlyn Lamb

This afternoon, I received an e-mail from Nayt Rundquist, the managing editor at New Rivers Press. He said he was preparing my contract (How exciting!) and author’s questionnaire (I’m an author!). Nayt asked me to confirm the name of my novel (“Is it Frozen Voices or Frozen Forest?”) and its approximate length (306 pages, at the moment). He said he’d get back in touch with me soon and then he, too, congratulated me several times. Pretty cool!

Friday, July 17, 2015 / November 17, 2015 by Kaitlyn Lamb

Fast forward a few weeks to when I arrived at Enders Island, Connecticut, for my FUMFA Alumni Writers’ Conference. For the past ten days, everyone I knew seemed to have made a point to get in touch with me to congratulate me on winning the prize. I posted a notice on Facebook and had over a hundred messages in response, telling me how happy they were for me. The people at my office, all of the folks in my various writers’ groups, the ladies in my book club, but—most especially—all of the other writers at FUMFA. It seemed that just about everyone I’d ever met through the program went out of his way to send me his best wishes.

And when I arrived at Enders for the conference, the congratulations only intensified. Everyone was genuinely happy for me and proud of my accomplishment. I kept finding myself in tears from the sheer joy of knowing such wonderful, big-hearted people.

Richard Hoffman, the judge for the book prize, was a guest teacher and lecturer at the conference. After two days, I finally worked up the courage to introduce myself to him and to thank him for his kind words about Frozen Voices. I mean, it’s not every day that a writer gets her work compared to E. L. Doctorow! But then, as I stood there talking to Richard, I realized that he’d selected FV because he thought it was a good novel. Not that he thought it had potential, but that he believed it already was a good novel! I was absolutely stunned. Something I’d written was deemed print-worthy by as accomplished an author as Richard Hoffman.

Things got even more surreal to me a few nights later, during the formal announcement of the prize. Al Davis, the senior editor at New Rivers Press, described the parameters of the contest and then Richard rose and explained why he’d selected my novel. More kind words! He even read the prologue aloud to all the FUMFA students, faculty, and alumni assembled in the chapel. And he read it very well! (I joked with him later that I’d like him to come to all of my book signings with me since he’d done such a good job reading my work.)

Then Richard called me up to the podium and handed me an envelope. (It contained a congratulations card, signed by all of the faculty members—so wonderful!) I looked out at the faces in the pews and said (something like…), “Although I’ve scribbled down stories and dreamed about becoming a published author all my life, three and half years ago, I arrived here on Enders Island for my first residency, not knowing any of you and not knowing the first thing about writing. That first morning, I sat in Karen Osborn’s workshop, listening to discussions about ‘voice’ and ‘point of view’ and I had no idea what anyone was talking about. So, when I say that literally everything I’ve learned about the art of writing, I’ve learned from all of you, I really mean it. Thank you all for helping make this dream come true.”

Tuesday, July 7, 2015 / November 17, 2015 by Kaitlyn Lamb

I spent most of the day on our family room couch, sick with a yucky stomach flu. When I turned on my telephone at 11:30 p.m. to use it as an alarm clock, my home screen informed me that I had 32 Facebook messages. Except for my birthday, I don’t generally receive anywhere near that many messages, so I was curious. Opening up the app, I found comment after comment, congratulating me. For what? I honestly hadn’t a clue. On my phone screen, I paged down and down until I reached the first message, which said, “RE: the Fairfield Book Prize.”

Without reading any more, I dropped my phone and raced down the hallway to the bedroom only to find Chris fast asleep already. (I am always amazed at how fast that man can fall asleep!) I jiggled his foot and said, “I think I won!”

He said, “Hunh?” (After all, it was nearly midnight.)

“I think I won!”

“Won what?”

“The Book Prize—I think I won!”

“What do you mean…You think you won?”

I explained that I hadn’t seen an official announcement, just a bunch of friends congratulating me.

Chris got out of bed and followed me back to the family room where we turned on my laptop computer and pulled up Facebook. There, at the bottom of all of the wonderful congratulatory messages, was this announcement:

July 7 @ 5:39 pm

Congratulations, Lynne Harris Heinzmann, on winning the Fairfield Book Prize for “Frozen Voices” – Richard Hoffman, this year’s judge said: “It’s an ambitious piece of storytelling with multiple and interesting points of view and characters that are clearly and indelibly drawn, including Harry Houdini. I was reminded of E.L. Doctorow.” We are very proud of you!!

I looked at Chris. “Holy cow…I won the book prize!”

“You sure did.” He looked so proud of me and I loved that look more than anything.

I hardly got any sleep that night. I was just SO excited about becoming a published author and I kept trying to imagine how that was going to change my life.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015 / November 17, 2015 by Kaitlyn Lamb

I began my workday at my day job the same way I began most days: by checking my e-mail to see what’d happened since I left the office the night before. But when I read a message from Elizabeth Hastings and Michael White of the Fairfield University MFA Program (FUMFA), informing me that I’d been selected as one of the five finalists for the book prize, I was so excited I flitted around the office, going from cubicle to cubicle, telling everyone the good news. Then I called Chris (my husband) and my mother, my two biggest fans, and told them, too.

A few minutes later, though, as I sat at my desk with a huge, goofy grin on my face, a thought occurred to me: I had no idea which of my manuscripts had been selected. I pulled up the e-mail from Elizabeth and Michael and verified that it didn’t specify. So, I had another dilemma… Should I contact the contest organizers and ask them which novel was in contention for the prize or should I just wait to see what happened. If one of my novels did win—a long shot, at best—they’d certainly tell me which one it was. And if I didn’t win, I could ask the question then. (I’m usually not a superstitious person, but I felt like calling or e-mailing the prize folks might jinx my chances somehow.) So I didn’t call, but just said a few more prayers.

February 2015 / November 17, 2015 by Kaitlyn Lamb

Two years ago, while I was still a MFA student at Fairfield University, I submitted a copy of Frozen Voices for the Fairfield Book Prize 2013. I didn’t win and wasn’t even selected as a finalist, but one of the contest readers said that my manuscript had come “very close.” That was all the encouragement I needed. Over the next two years, I worked and reworked the story, creating a novel of four interwoven stories, with one chapter from each narrator following each other in sequence, from the beginning to the ending of the book. During the same time period, I wrote two young adult novels and completed another work of historical fiction. When it came time for the 2015 Fairfield Book Prize, I was faced with a dilemma: which book should I submit? Even though I’d completely revamped Frozen Voices, I was afraid that since I’d entered it before, the contest readers might not be interested in hearing the same story again, no matter how different it was in format. But it was, by far, my most polished piece of work. I checked the contest rules and found that I could submit more than one manuscript, so I decided to improve my odds by entering both the rewritten Frozen Voices and Letter Boxes, my other historical fiction novel. (I thought the two young adult novels might not be literary enough for the contest.) I emailed both manuscripts in February and said a few prayers, mostly asking God to help me accept whatever the outcome.

First Blog / November 16, 2015 by Kaitlyn Lamb

A few weeks ago, I found out that I had won the Fairfield Book Prize 2015, a bi-annual award given to a current or former student of the Fairfield University Masters of Fine Arts (FUMFA) Program. As part of the prize, I will receive a check for $1,000, but more excitingly, my novel, Frozen Voices, will be published by New Rivers Press in 2016.

I thought it might be interesting to start a blog about all of the events—big and small—that happen this year, events leading up to the book launch next summer. At its inception, I don’t have a clearly defined purpose for writing this blog. Is it for me, to catalogue the steps that led up to publishing my first book? Or is it for other writers, who want to know what’s involved in being published by a small university press? Or perhaps it’s to generate material for another, future novel? I don’t really know where this blog will take me, but I invite you to join me on the journey; it should be fun!

In order to tell the complete story of the road to publishing, I need to create a few pre-dated blog entries, before I knew I’d have something to blog about…