It’s been a busy few months for the Chasing Portraits project. Between the return from the two week filming trip to Poland in October, a new talk, the Indiewire Project of the Week win, the announcement of the grant awarded by the Claims Conference, and now this book deal…. well, WOW. It’s going to be another crazy, busy year, but a year about which I am incredibly excited. I am writing like a mad woman to finish the book so that I can put it into the hands of my editor at Berkley/Penguin before the end of the year so it can be in YOUR hands in late 2016!
A really enormous thank you goes out to a lot of friends and supporters who have helped me accomplish so much and to reach this particular goal. A special thank you to Jill Swenson of Swenson Book Development and to Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management. A year ago Jill began working with me on the Chasing Portraits book project. Her belief in the story, and my ability to tell it, helped me as I tackled writing the non-fiction book proposal. A year of telephone calls, Tweets, Facebook posts, and emails helped bring shape and narrative arc to the story. It is because of Jill’s wisdom and guidance that I produced a solid book proposal which led to fantastic literary representation from Sharlene Martin. Sharlene is the kind of agent every aspiring writer dreams of and should be so lucky to have on their team. After a few hours of Jill’s putting my query into Sharlene’s email and Sharlene’s reading of my proposal, I had representation. Her belief in my book project was wholehearted from the get go and the day she landed me this book deal was a fabulous one indeed! I am delighted to be working with Natalee Rosenstein at Berkley/Penguin.
There are now many new milestones to reach in this book writing journey. I promise to share and post many of them here.
– Elizabeth