Two of the most important conversations in Deborah Schneider’s life happened last year.

The first came in October, when she found out that a kidney had been found for her son, Garth. It was his second transplant and it came at a crucial time. His health had gotten so bad that at one point he was listed in critical condition at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center. There had been numerous episodes of waiting overnight at hospitals to see if a donated kidney was a match, with no avail.

“There was no feeling in the world compared to that moment,” Schneider said. “It’s watching your child get a life.”

The other came a month later in November, when a New York publisher told her that her novel was going to be published.

“I danced all night,” Schneider said, who got the call at a writers convention.

The two calls brought to an end a story that started in 1991, when Schneider took six weeks off to care for herself before she donated part of her own kidney to her son, who was born with polycystic kidney disease.

She found it to be the perfect time to write the romance novel that she had always wanted to. Schneider started to read romance novels while studying history in college and came to appreciate other historical romance authors who wrote outside of the “bodice busters” that filled the American romance market and popular imagination.

She was also influenced by her move to the Valley. She and her husband resolved to leave her native New York during a blizzard and head west. The trials and joys of moving west and finding new places, especially by women, is a reoccurring theme in her stories.

“I was always interested in women’s role in history because we never learned a lot about it,” Schneider said. “When I was in college, I was told I could be either or a nurse or doctor. We weren’t told anything else.”

While she and her son prepared for their surgery, Schneider started to write her story on the new family computer. She didn’t finish it in six weeks, but found additional moments to write during children’s nap time at a day care she ran.

Finishing the book was only the beginning to getting it published. Schneider had to market herself in a romance novel world that generated $1.37 billion in sales last year, and although the market is huge, it is increasingly hard to get into it. Schneider said her own agent has 100 manuscripts in her office at any given time.

Schneider received one rejection letter after another, but she persisted and even started work on other novels.

“Writers will know what I mean when I say my rejection letters got better,” Schneider said. “I started to get letters with more suggestions.”

By the time Schneider had finished working on her third novel, “Beneath A Silver Moon,” two years ago, she had nearly 10 years of workshops, critique sessions and marketing insight behind her.

In 2001, she entered “Beneath A Silver Moon” into a romance novel contest sponsored by Dorechester Publishing. Winners would be published and announced at the Romance Writers Association conference held in Orlando last fall.

While she waited for the conference, her son waited for another kidney transplant.

“He said, ‘Mom, in the coming year I think your book will be published and I will get a kidney,'” Schneider said.

He was right on both counts.

Schneider is now busy finishing up her fourth novel, “Promise Me,” a romance set in the pioneer West that she says is the best thing she has ever written. She eventually wants to try writing romantic science fiction, a growing genre in the romance market.

Schneider doesn’t know if her future books will be published, but she believes she has a strong voice and the experience to get it before readers.

“I really know what I’m doing now,” Schneider said.

Meanwhile, she is savoring the one element to her trials that she said is the only requisite part of any romance novel: a happy ending.

* A book release party for “Beneath A Silver Moon” will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, at Sisters Restaurant and Tea Room, 458 S.W. Mount Si Blvd., North Bend.