My Journey to Publication (the short version)

I'm over at my fellow author Richard Mabry's blog today talking about my writing journey to publication. Stop by and comment!

What's in a Name?

I love my name. I really do. I love the uniqueness of the apostrophe and the capital A. I love that it forms a contraction of my parents’ names: Don and Ann.

But what I love, computers hate. Databases scoff. Website and email addresses distain. It’s been a struggle since college, really. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been mistakenly called “Dan” from computer printouts. Or “D”, as in the initial. I get mail addressed to all sorts of interesting combinations of my name, too.

So when the possibility of publication drew near, we considered the question of my name. Would it cause a problem? The answer: most likely. So after many prayers we came to the conclusion that it was more important to be found by readers than to hold on to my uniqueness.

Very soon all my web presences (website, facebook, twitter) will become ANNE MATEER, as that is the name that will appear on my book covers. Yes, you will all still know me as D’Ann. And my D’Ann accounts on the web will still work, too. But the primary identity I’ll use as an author will be Anne Mateer.

It’s kind of strange as I think about it. But it’s kind of fun, too. It allows me put on and take off my “writer” hat. It helps shy, reluctant me to market this other persona. And it keeps me humble.

So I'm rejoicing in and get used to my new name. Look for it to pop up on the blog and other Internet meeting places in the very near future!

Humbled and Amazed

I can remember sitting in my bedroom, somewhere around 30 years ago now, reading a Eugenia Price novel and thinking Someday I would love to write historical fiction that is specifically Christian. You have to understand: Eugenia Price’s novels, published by Doubleday, had the most Christian content I’d read in a currently penned book. But I longed for more. 

Enter Janette Oke. And Bodie Thoene. And Gilbert Morris. I devoured their books as I finished college, got married, had babies. Suddenly Christian historical fiction was everywhere! The reader in me rejoiced. The writer? Not so much.

But in fits and starts, from about 10 years old to 33 years old, I nursed my writing dream. In 2000, with my youngest off to kindergarten, I began to take my writing more seriously. In 2001, I actually finished the manuscript for a historical novel.

Then I switched to contemporary women’s fiction. Wrote three more novels. Experienced a miraculously specific encouragement from the Lord to return to historical fiction. Wrote a new historical novel. Received a request for that manuscript from an editor judging it in a contest—an editor at a publishing house I’d have never raised my sights to dream about. I revised and revised and revised under the direction of said editor. And I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed. Not that I would be published necessarily, but that the Lord would teach me through the journey, no matter the outcome.

Today--exactly 13 months since the day I received the email requesting my manuscript--I can finally announce that I signed my first book contract, a two-book deal with Bethany House Publishers. As I look back through the details of the past 10 years—details I keep in a file started long ago named “My Writing Journey Or How God Managed to Orchestrate My Career”—and I am humbled and amazed.

Today is my day to boast in the Lord. To declare that He has done this wondrous thing. To shout from the highest mountain, "To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen."


Oh Lord, You have done wondrous things and my mouth will never cease to tell of Your greatness!