My first novel for Samhain Publishing, Venus in Blue Jeans, was released four years ago, January 27, 2009. It’s been quite a ride, but Venus started it all.

The whole Venus saga is kind of an illustration of the way romance publishing works. I started writing Venus because, frankly, a contest judge had pissed me off. I had another book that I was sending around the contest circuit. These days I can admit it wasn’t very good, but at that time I really thought it was. One contest judge told me flatly that my book wasn’t a romance because my hero and heroine didn’t meet within the first ten pages, and everyone knew that all romantic heroes and heroines had to meet within the first ten pages (preferably the first five). Now since I could immediately think of at least three very good romance novels where that didn’t happen, I was, shall we say, annoyed by this pronouncement.

So, I thought, what about a book where I spent the entire first chapter not having the characters meet? In fact, what about a book where that was the whole point of the first chapter? Thus was Venus born. Part of the first chapter is available at Samhain, and I’ve posted the whole thing here on my Web site.

Having had my revenge on the contest judge, I now had a collection of characters I really liked and sort of a plot. I say “sort of” because I knew in general terms where I wanted it to go, but I wasn’t sure about the specifics. And from this point on, I had a lot of help from a lot of different people. The folks in my critique group at my local RWA chapter, for example. They not only told me when I was going wrong, they also applauded me when I was going right. Contests were a huge help. A lot of judges liked that first chapter, but they also told me things I could do to make it better, and the things they told me helped me whip the rest of the book into shape, too. And I also had a wonderful editor at Samhain, Lindsey Faber, who always managed to pick out just the part of the book that wasn’t working (and the part I really hoped she wouldn’t notice!).

But that isn’t all of the saga. When I got the call (or rather the email) telling me Samhain was buying my book, I had a couple of hours of elation before my husband arrived home to tell me he hadn’t gotten a promotion at work he’d been promised for two years. It was probably the most rollercoaster day I’ve ever been through. When Venus came out on January 27, we went out to dinner that night to celebrate, and he left the next day for a new job in Colorado. I faced three months on my own, packing up the house and saying goodbye to friends and family as I prepared to move to the foothills. It was sort of hard to be as chipper as I wanted to be at the Samhain Café that day.

But now, four years later, I’m a happy Colorado resident with six more Konigsburg books to be proud of and four new non-Konigsburg books all coming out this year—Bolted from Samhain on April 2 and Medium Well (February 19), Medium Rare (August 20) and Happy Medium (December 17) from Berkley InterMix.

So to celebrate the start of it all, I’m giving away a copy of Venus In Blue Jeans, ebook or print, your choice. Just leave me a comment on this blog and you’ll be entered into a drawing next week.

Happy birthday Docia and Cal and Janie and Pete and Lars and Jess and Erik and Morgan and Tom and Deirdre and Nando and Kit and Joe and MG. And most of all, happy birthday Venus In Blue Jeans. I couldn’t have done it without you.