How I got published
Child safety campaigner Herta Feely shares the publication story of her debut, Saving Phoebe Murrow
Herta Feely
The path to publication is fraught with potholes. Or can be. And is quite often for debut authors. (Certainly mine took time!) But don’t despair.
Here’s my crooked path: In 2008, I read a news story in the Washington Post about a girl (Megan Meier) who was cyber-bullied by a boy named Josh on MySpace (the Facebook of its era). He suggested she kill herself and, sadly, she did. (This happened in 2006.) Only it turned out that ‘Josh’ was the mother of one of Megan’s former best friends. I couldn’t believe a woman would do such a thing and decided I wanted to write a novel about the pitfalls of social media. Over the next three years, characters and plot began to emerge for my novel. (Please note: Saving Phoebe Murrow bears only a fleeting resemblance to Megan’s story.)