Take us through the process. You had an idea for your book, you wrote it, then you decided to find a publisher. What were your experiences with that? Or did you decide to self-publish without looking any farther?

I got into self-publishing by accident. I finished writing my first novel Thwarted Queen in the fall of 2009, and so I spent the whole of 2010 trying to find an agent. I got 45 rejections.

In early 2011 I learned that another novelist was publishing a novel with Simon & Schuster which involved my protagonist. I had a choice; let my manuscript molder in a drawer, or publish.

The other author published her novel in May 2011, and so I self-published mine in October.