Affinity's Window was not my first novel. I wrote it as a prequel to my first real work, my baby, my one true love, Angel Rising. That story was the genesis of my writing, but being the naive neophyte that I was, I had no idea what was so wrong with it. And boy, was there a lot wrong with it.
For starters, it was 330,000 words. I had no idea. It was a story I'd been sitting on for years. When I finally sat down to write it, and for me even this was a stunning accomplishment, I had no real concept of structure. I knew what I wanted to say, I just didn't know how to say it. I'd been reading novels my entire adult life, devouring them actually, so I knew the basics of what I wanted to do, but truly, I had no idea.
So I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote. To my mind, and this is quite the twisted repository, the longer the better. I was absolutely baffled as to why my submissions were being continually rejected. One agent finally took pity on me, adding to her rejection form letter, "No one will ever even look at your work with that astronomical word count." I, of course, didn't believe her.
After all, my library is full of books that are fatter than mine, and some by a long shot. She didn't know what she was talking about. So, I kept sending the manuscript out, and I kept right on getting rejected. I had no idea.
Then something happened that changed everything. I met my agent.