‘Tis the season when I wax emotional about the folks who’ve made my writing life possible:
My friends and family, who have put up with so much to get me to this place.
My adversaries, who’ve added spice and determination to my life, tested my limits, and taught me the value of both humility and righteous indignation.
Special thanks to my readers, my editors, and my agent for taking a chance on me and on Moro’s Price, a book that is a bizarre chimera of epic space opera and really gritty m/m erotic romance.
This book happened by accident. After spending two years trying to get an agent, any agent, interested in a mainstream epic fantasy with no on-camera sex at all, I took a break and just wrote the first stupid thing that came to mind. That turned out to be Moro in an arena. By page two, I knew I was nowhere near Kansas. But I’d served an apprenticeship in raunchy fanfiction for nearly ten years. I wanted to see where the story went. That meant following Moro, a man who went very quickly from faceless doll to complicated and opinionated person.
When I finished writing the book I felt an almost physical letdown from the sheer high of writing something without reservations or limits, and never completely knowing how the plot would shift until the very end. I also wondered if I’d wasted three months of writing time. I knew most markets tolerant of the space opera aspect would not allow the graphic sex. Most publishers okay with the sex were going to balk at the big, shiny, rather too-complicated plot. From the start, the book took itself neatly out of consideration for either a RITA or a Nebula award, and I had to accept that as the price for writing it.
And…I was right. The rejection comments on my query letters show editors’ valid worries about a mixed genre book with plot-driven non consent segments. One after another, the e-publishers I’d decided to query said some version of No or Hell, no or No, we don’t publish rape stories, I won’t even read the synopsis, go away! I knew better than to write back and beg It’s not a rape story – it’s about trust, destiny, love, and two really hot boys whose flaws become assets when they meet.
When it comes to query letters, no means no.
So I was startled when Treva Harte at Loose Id told me to query the book, along with a note justifying that dire second chapter. I was floored when a submissions editor asked for a full. I could not believe it when Treva made me an offer a little over a month after I began querying. Loose Id had been the one e-publisher I really wanted for my book from the start, and the one I was most nervous about querying.
They wanted me.
Since it’s the holiday season, I want to thank Loose Id again for taking that chance: Treva and Venessa for asking for more, Suzene and the other editors for brutal and necessary copy-edits, Allie and Fiona for artwork above and beyond the bounds of patience, Tamzin for keeping me steady during sequel blues, and everyone else at Loose Id who made this experiment possible.
Thanks to the formidable Cherry Weiner, who offered critical guidance during contract talks, and who may someday see the mainstream fantasy that started it all.
And thanks to the readers who took a chance as well, and the reviewers who understood my story probably better than I did. That includes the latest review up on Joyfully Reviewed:
http://www.joyfullyreviewed.com/new-reviews/moros-price-by-m-c-hana
You are all my Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus present. I am blessed.