How I got published - and how you can too
*** Long post alert *** How I got published In 1998 I wrote a terrible book. It was called "The Temple of Truth" or something similarly trite. My lifelong ambition was to be a published author, and having recently joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I had discovered that there was a thriving market for clean LDS-based literature. I thought that writing for this market would be an easy way to get my first book accepted by a publisher, after which a mainstream publisher would surely snap up my second manuscript given that I was already a published author. For the record, I was wrong on both counts. My terrible book landed on the desk of Covenant editor Valerie Holladay. She read it and wrote to tell me that my book was terrible, but that she thought my writing style showed promise and noted that I lived in Wales. Many Utah residents had ancestors from Wales, she told me, and would love to learn more about it. Would I consider writing a book set there?...