Your Ideas Are Needed

As you can tell, JoAnne and I haven’t had much time or inspiration for this blog of late. I sure admire the busy agents and editors who do manage to maintain a blog, and I also appreciate a great blogger like Chip who understands when it is time to unload some of that busyness.

I’m popping on today in the midst of one of the busiest times of the year, both in our publishing and personal lives, to be sure the word is getting out about a new publishing opportunity.

Barbour wants to do several non-seasonal novella collections in the year 2012 on top of the 4 we typically do for Christmas—and I need proposals right NOW.

So, if you find yourself not too terribly busy and have the idea juices flowing despite the freezing temperatures, feel free to query me.

I need collections that have 3 or 4 short stories that add up to at least 80,000 total words.

They can be written by 1, 2, 3, or 4 authors, though I’m looking for a good mix of author experience in these groups. I’m fine with authors working on the ideas as teams and submitting proposals without going through an agent for these, so if we need to contact an agent to approve a contract we can do that for you (please include name of contact). This also allows for authors who have various representation to still work together on a project. And in this case, for new authors, they won’t need to be agented.

(Our policy for full-length fiction, Heartsong Presents, teen fiction, and so forth is that new authors need to come to us through an agent.)

I need all stories to be American settings that fit under our “Romancing America” series banner. But they should highlight an interesting destination that the reader would want to experience.

We want both historical and contemporary collections. A historical collection could progress generationally where the last story is a contemporary setting.

Sweet romance is the key plot driver. Getting the couple together in scenes quickly and often is important to building toward a believable happy ending for them.

Other things besides the location and romance that unify these stories may be themes like a light mystery, hobbies like quilting, letters, family, occupations, an event as in historical occurrence or a modern-day reunion, subcultures like the Mennonites or Quakers, etc.

Titles currently available to review are:
A Door County Christmas
A Riverwalk Christmas
Christmas Mail-Order Brides
A Woodland Christmas

Thanks and Merry Christmas!