I got a book deal. It still feels a bit surreal but I’m slowly getting my head around the idea that the characters that I’ve been carrying around my head for so long are finally going to go out into the big wide world.

I wrote about the long gestation of this novel in a previous post. (Click here if you’re interested.) But now I’d like to write about how the deal actually came about as I always love reading about other authors’ road to publication.

My first big break was sending my opening to S...