A good portion of an aspiring fiction writer's life is spent waiting for The Call. Yes, you keep writing, grinding out (hopefully) a few thousand words on your Work in Progress each day. Yes, you interact with other writers, seeking advice and encouragement. Yes, you market yourself and your potential works by sending out queries and entering contests.

But even while you do all those things, a secret part of you is always waiting for The Call.

I'm not sure why I think of it as The Call (my friend Justine Musk, whose first novel is coming out this October, may have labeled it as such in one of her blog posts), but that's exactly what it is. Or perhaps I should say what they are, because The Call is really two calls: the first from an agent wanting to represent you, the second from a publisher wanting to publish you.

For me, The Call--The Calls--came in the last few months. In May, following a two-year agent search, I received The First Call from an editor-turned-agent, who said, "I think your book is wonderful--something like Dean Koontz meets Leif Enger." I've never read much Koontz, but to even be mentioned in the same breath as Enger (whose Peace Like a River remains among my top books of all time), well. He had me at "hello."

As thrilling as it was, I didn't know I was already well on my way to getting a contract--thanks to a manuscript I had given up for dead a year before. Yes, I sold a book only after I stopped trying to sell it. That's an interesting story in and of itself, and one I'll relate soon. But for now, we're just talking about The Call, and about the feelings it generates.

I woke up the morning of June 21st (my birthday, incidentally), turned to my wife, and said: "Hey, maybe I'll get a big publishing contract as a birthday gift." We both snickered because, well, because. I hadn't marketed my work seriously for some time, my newly-signed agent had only been on board a few weeks, and I was pretty sure the straggling manuscripts still circulating would die the slow, painful deaths their bretheren before them had. Experience had taught me this, if nothing else, and my comment to my wife was said as--and received as--a joke.

By now, you're probably thinking I received The Second Call on my birthday, aren't you? A wonderful, unexpected, fairy tale resolution. An answered prayer, if you like. Well, it didn't happen that way. Instead, I got The Call on June 22, the day after my birthday.

Still, I'll take it.

When the phone rang around two in the afternoon, it was my agent. I remember his first words quite clearly: "Tony, I have some good news. You have an offer for two books in hardcover." The rest of the conversation is still somewhat foggy. I know we talked about royalty rates, possible publication dates, questions to ask, and so on. But I had a hard time concentrating on all that, because for me, this was The Call. Two books. Hardcover. Can I say on my list of most memorable moments, it immediately made the Top Ten? Maybe even the Top Five? And can I tell you, if you're a writer waiting for The Call yourself, that it's one of those rare events that live up to expectations?

The next few weeks were spent negotiating the contract, setting the timelines, and doing everything else to help all the pieces come together. And I'm pleased to now say my first novel will be released by the wonderful folks at Bethany House Publishers in summer of 2006, with many thanks going to Dave Long. (More about Dave in the coming days, too.) In fact, this whole experience has given me a number of interesting tales, and we're still at the beginning of the journey.

Let me say this: I'll be sharing all of it with you as it happens. Indeed, I have some interesting ideas (at least interesting to me) about how to do that, and I'll be inviting you to join me. In fact, I'll be making a few changes around the halls of tlhines.com in the coming weeks. You can hear about all of them, and get some inside information, if you join my mailing list now. And again, that's stuff that will be happening as the journey to publication continues.

For now, I'm still riding on the wave of The Call, some six-ish weeks later. A fine, fine, birthday gift.

And only one day late.