Pitchmas success story: Cat Montmorency!

With Pitchmas 2014 ready to kick off in a couple days, here's another success story! And this one? I fucking LOVED this story right off the bat, and BEGGED (fine, MADE) her enter Pitchmas. So, without further adieu, here's Cat Montmorency!

Way back in December of 2012, I wrote this little…thing. I’m not even sure it could be called a short story, but we’ll call it that. I was sick, and my brain was a little off as a result (who am I kidding, it’s always off). But this story, it was different. Very different, from anything I’d written before, and I had no idea where it had come from. It just came. And like I do with everything I write, I immediately sent it to Tam. The conversation went something like this:

Me: *shoves story* *runs*

Tam: I LOVE IT!!

Me: o_O

Tam: Shut up.

Me: So... What you're saying is I should write more of this?

Tam: What I'm saying, is I think THIS type of writing would snag you an agent.

It took more convincing than that (believe me, that’s the very, very abbreviated version), but by January I was hard at work on the most personal and probably the most difficult story I’d ever written. I finished the draft in March, and proceeded to bite my nails, fingers, and anything else in sight as my CPs read. And read. And read. And then came back telling me how much they loved it.

I couldn’t figure out why, but they did. So much that when Tam pushed me to enter PitchMas in July, I let her convince me.

I got offers. Several, between the contest and the twitter pitch party. I panicked, naturally. I hadn’t even meant to write this story, let alone allow anyone else to see it. And here there were, 3 agents and 4 small presses wanting to read. So after Tam slapped me back into submission (I’d be lost without her), I sent off the pages, and waited.

I had an offer the next day. And then another. And another, all from small presses. And then I got something else. A pass. But not just ANY pass. One of the agents that requested was Jes Negrón, a (then) junior agent at Talcott-Notch. To be honest, I didn’t know much about her. But when she wrote me back to pass, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she had a vision. She knew it wasn’t ready. But she could see the potential. She could see the story I wanted to write, but had been too scared to.

I think I fell in love with her then.

I turned down the offers, the sure things, and went back to work with nothing but the possibility of an R&R. It turned out to be the best choice I’d ever made. In January of 2014, Jes offered, and I accepted. I revised again. We went on sub. And then in September, we accepted a deal from Samhain Publishing. Fleur de Nuit, the first book in the Bourbon Street Bondage series, will be published in September 2015.

Congrats, Cat! 

Cat Montmorency grew up reading every book she could get her hands on, and pining after the ones she couldn’t. She’s been everything from lifeguard to riding instructor to high school math teacher, but discovered that being a ninja gamer-girl and out-of-the-closet die-hard romantic who writes things was much more fun. If pressed, she’ll describe herself as a Southern Belle with a geek complex and a fetish for well-crafted words.

You can find her on Twitter