Boo Who?: Spooktacular October

This is my spooky file drawer where old, “gravely” ill manuscripts and book dummies go to die. The fact that I bury them here rather than in a recycle bin means I still think they have a tiny, flickering spark of life in them.

I sold my very first two manuscripts sixteen years ago this month. One is no longer with us (aka out of print). The other is alive and well on the children’s Halloween table at Barnes and Noble nearly every year. It's a board book, Boo Who? A Spooky Lift-the-Flap Book, published by Scholastic.

Here’s what I sent the publisher for consideration: a dummy, not a manuscript.

This is one of my successes, but I’ve gotten many more “no” replies from editors than I have “yes” ones. Although I’ve written lots of published books by now, I still regularly add more manuscripts to my not-quite-dead drawer.

Why? I’m a determined optimist. (I think most authors are.) Otherwise I’d toss these manuscripts. I’d let them go meet their maker. But as I do with that prom dress with the shoulder pads in the depths of my closet--I keep a vigil over them, hoping they'll be needed someday. Hey! Maybe something in this cobwebbed drawer will even rise from the almost-dead this coming Halloween night. How spooktacular would that be?

~ Joan Holub

Boo Who? A Spooky Lift-the-Flap Book

co-author with Suzanne Williams 

of the Goddess Girls series 

and Heroes in Training series 

published by Aladdin/Simon & Schuster