Have you ever wondered how an ordinary person becomes a published novelist?

Well, I’ve got the answer for you.

Actually, I’ve got 47 answers for you.

For almost two decades, I’ve been privileged to be a member of an organization composed of Christian novelists. Well, organization might not be the appropriate word. We’re writers, after all, people not noted for their organizational skills. We have no bureaucracy or regular membership dues.

Mostly what we do is dialogue online (and very occasionally in person) on topics loosely connected to writing. We encourage each other, give advice to each other, make suggestions, and even celebrate each other’s achievements. Almost anything to avoid actually writing.

The topic of one of our recent discussions was “first novels”—how we came to write our first novel, how we attempted to have it accepted for publication, and how we navigated the complicated publication process. A few of our first novels were accepted for publication fairly quickly (in only a few months or years). Some have never been published at all. Some were only published after years of effort, professional development, and rewriting. But all of us persevered and eventually became published novelists.

Then, someone in our discussion suggested we formally write out the stories of our first novels and have those stories published together in a book. After all, publishing books is what we do.

The result is My First Novel: And What Became of It, a book in which 47 of us tell how we attempted to get our first novels published. Each story concludes with the “best writing advice I ever received.” It is available, in paperback and ebook formats, via bookstores and online retailers such as Amazon. When it was released some time ago, it quickly rose to become “the best-selling new release among fiction writing reference books.” Okay, I recognize there are not a lot of such books and they don’t sell many copies…but, still, we were number one, at least for a little while. And it has given us another opportunity to boast that we are published authors.

So, if you want to know how we did it (and how you, too, might be able to do it), read the book.