“Dear Lynne, I am absolutely wild about  the two picture books you sent me, and would very much like to publish them both!”

I opened the letter from a major publishing house, read the line above, and screamed. I read it again, and screamed again. And I had to do the read-and-scream a third time before I could manage to tear my eyes away from that magical first line and read on to the end of the letter.

There were a few problems—the art I had sent was not quite right, there was a little revision needed—all fixable, I knew. This was the first time anyone had wanted to publish a book of mine, and I was over the moon.

Except that, three months later, I got a different letter from that same editor that said, “I’m sorry this didn’t come to a happier conclusion, Lynne...”

I didn’t write again for almost a year.

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