Joy Margetts – Author??

Or…  ‘A newbie’s adventures in publishing land’….Part 1.

Emblazoned across the top of my new website is my name, and my descriptor – ‘Joy Margetts, Author’. Seeing it in print is odd to say the least. Unsettling. Not quite believable.

I never set out to be a published author. I’d be lying if I said that it hadn’t been a dream, to see a work of mine in print – a way off dream, like winning the million pound lottery prize, in a lottery I never even paid to play. So far away a dream, that it was tucked well to the back of that high shelf of dreams, that perhaps we all have. I just wrote for the love of it, because it was a favourite way of communicating my feelings, expressing my heart, connecting into God. And then The Healing happened. It came as a gift, and you can read the story of how it happened on my website. I won’t bore you by repeating that story, although it is pretty incredible.

I wondered, when I had finished The Healing, if it were meant for more people than me to read. Did it have a message that would help people? I gave the manuscript to four people that I loved and trusted. Every one of them came back saying how much they had enjoyed the book. And was I writing any more? And more importantly, how much it had spoken to them. Still undecided as to what to do with it, I sat on my book (Not quite literally, it being still in electronic form, and my laptop too valuable to risk my hefty body weight). However, the words in those computer files never quite left my consciousness; the characters running about, and the scenes expanding in my brain. What was even more alarming was that the ideas for follow up books were already formulating, and I was making hasty notes all over the place, and lying awake at night imagining more characters and different storylines. What was happening to me? Had I suddenly morphed into a REAL writer?

So I prayed, and gave The Healing to God and asked Him what I should do with it. I had looked at ‘how to get a book published’ and had come away from my research deeply disheartened. It was so unlikely that I would find a publisher to take my book; without an agent, or published works to my name, or a famous name, or celebrity status. (Celebrity status? Really? I am a fifty something housewife from rural North Wales, for goodness sake!) And I knew nothing about the publishing business. It just seemed an insurmountable mountain for a worn out middle- aged woman to even attempt to climb. But I wasn’t on my own. God appeared with His paraglider, and suddenly the mountain looked more like a spot on the landscape way below me. Through a series of strange connections, He directed me to Instant Apostle, and suddenly a spark of hope appeared in my soul. So I summoned my courage, wrote an honest cover letter, and sent off the manuscript, preparing myself to be disappointed, but ready to accept the rejection. If that were God’s will…