Amazon Cover
I crossed paths with Dr. Emily Lavin Leverett at my first ConCarolinas. She mentioned a press she worked with, and I started haunting that press’ blog. From there, the blog’s visual writer’s prompts tempted me so I started writing responses and created my own blog. When a job opened in the administrative branch, I offered to remote work for the Canadian company. After a time, I started line editing for them too.
So you can blame where I am today in the publishing industry on her. I would have found a path of some sort – after all I met her at ConCarolinas – but this particular path I’m on started with a throw-away remark by her on a con panel.
Eventually that press folded, and I went onto another press. I still attended ConCarolinas and so did she, so we would say “hi” on occasion. Though she was a panelist, an editor of anthologies, and I was just a paying attendee, Dr. Leverett was always polite during our short exchanges. Short because my shyness and her guest-panel-busy.
Then my next press folded (Amazon did some changes on how romances could be advertised and that tanked a lot of the small press industry) and I was at loose ends. Thanks to a different network opportunity, I fell into Falstaff and discovered Dr. Leverett already there. In fact, her manuscript, Changeling’s Fall, had inspired the publisher, John Hartness, to take the step to becoming a publisher of other people’s works.
Her day job is an English professor and a medievalist. Her afternoon job is editing anthologies and writing papers required to remain a professor. And when she finds the time, she is working with her co-author Dr. Sarah Joy Adams on the other three books of The Eisteddford Chronicles.
It’s been an interesting walking along the same path as her. We take different stops in the publishing industry, but I admire her craftsmanship and determination as she trail blazes ahead of me. She is an amazing woman.