Starting over
Hello to all my old Mailchimp subscribers! I think I’m going to be very happy here on Substack, and I hope you’ll stick with me. And hello to all the new friends I hope to meet! I moved every year until I was ten, so I’m used to being the new kid on the block. That’s me in the picture above, dining at a little restaurant somewhere in the south of France last summer, and butchering the language between bites. I don’t know why I picked it exactly — if a picture is worth a thousand words, what exactly am I saying?
Which leads me to…
Who I am. I’ve been writing novels for 20 years, or rather, “learning my craft,” a euphemism with which most writers are familiar. I have found that the process of becoming a good writer consists mostly of being a bad writer for years on end. It requires a special kind of dissociation to do this. If you really knew how bad you were, would you continue, day after day, to pound those keys? If you’re a writer, the answer is yes, because you were too caught up in what you were writing to notice how bad it was, or too interested in how to make it better. And then one day, miraculously, it is, only now there’s a whole new mountain to climb.
Here’s the short version of my writing life. I started my first middle grade novel when I was pregnant with my son, who is now 22. I was already a writer of lawyerly briefs and unpublished literary short stories, and I decided I wanted to become the author of other unpublished things. So, over the following years, as my children grew before my eyes, so too did the amount of unpublished material in my computer database. I was a success! This, my friend, is the power of context.
Eventually, after much rending of the hair and gnashing of the teeth, I obtained a very good agent at a very good agency who had exceedingly good authors on her list. I am not ashamed to tell you that I cried, right there in the coffee shop, as we discussed representation and I saw, shimmering before me, my long career, punctuated discretely by prestigious awards and bestseller lists who would crow my virtues, shortly before they fell prey to the vicissitudes of the digital age.
But it was not to be. Mirages are fickle things. After shopping around two of my books to no avail, my agent decided she was not right for me. This may have been a euphemism too.
And then, disaster struck! I mean… more disaster! The pandemic was upon us. Do you remember? The zoom calls? The empty streets? The house littered with empty potato chip bags? And… the infamous pandemic project. My family and I installed a pond, built a deck, and played way too much Dominion. And having done all this, I did what anyone would do. I started my own author imprint, Starr Creek Press.
Believe, a middle grade mash-up of my 70s/80s childhood, came out in 2020. It won the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Best Middle Reader, which (again) made me cry. Because it had been a long haul, you know? It also won the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award for Debut Books, and the Best Book Award for Children’s Literature from American BookFest. It’s been my best seller at about 15,000 copies. But I think what I may be most proud of is that I reduced a 32-year-old woman to tears at 1 a.m., somewhere in the U.K., someone I’ve never met but that somehow I had reached. And after years of writing for agents and editors, all very lovely people, mind you — how miraculous it was to reach across the world and make contact with a reader, and deep contact at that. Each reader is like that for me, the fulfillment of the whole thing in one person. Each and every time.
But don’t get me wrong. I’d like to reach more people. Isn’t that why we write?
In 2021, I published Vasilisa, featuring the fantastic witch Baba Yaga, and in 2022, the sequel, Elena the Brave, which is based on the byliny, oral ballads of an idealized 10th century Kievan Rus. Both of these were BookLife Prize Semifinalists, and Elena also won the Writer’s Digest Best Self-Pub YA and nabbed a Kirkus star and write-up in their magazine. This too felt good after years of faceless toil. But even as I released Elena, Russian troops were invading Ukraine — literally, boots on the ground during my release week. And the planned sequels became more complicated for me. I know I will return to it some day — there’s still The Alatyr Stone to be written, and maybe the prequel, Pushkin’s Ring. Ahem, I think I still have some fans of this series out there? Yes? No? Maybe?
Lastly, in 2023, I released The Starlet Letter, a tongue-in-cheek mystery featuring twin 18-year-old female sleuths in 1930’s New York City. They belong to this eccentric, black-sheep Knickerbocker family who has taken in boarders to make ends meet. It pays homage in equal part to Nathanial Hawthorne and Wes Anderson. I hope you’ll read it because I’ve had a hard time getting eyes on this one, even though it was shortlisted for some awards, and it’s really funny, if I do say so myself. I’ve tabled the rest of the Canary House Mysteries until I can develop a readership for the series. So… um… if you read The Starlet Letter… um, let me know.
Now what?
I’m excited to be part of the Substack community. I expect to post once a week or so, and I’ll be exploring the work of others on Substack as well, so if what I’ve said here resonates with you, please reach out. I write a blog about analog values in the digital age entitled Positively Flummoxed, and I’ll be sharing some of those essays here, along with musings about my writing life, my characters and worlds, and whatever else has captured my fancy, with plenty of opportunities to be involved if you’d like to be a beta reader, comment on prospective cover art, or just talk.
I’m working on a new book, Arcana, and I look forward to sharing chapters as I revise. Here’s the pitch: Three small town teens in mid-century America stumble through a portal in a carnival trailer into bygone chapters of history, only to discover they are reincarnated initiates of an ancient mystery sect who must decode clues hidden in the tarot if they are escape the dark stranger chasing them through time — and protect the balance of good and evil in the world. Think Something Wicked This Way Comes meets The DaVinci Code.
If you’ve gone this far, thank you for reading! I’ll check in next week… from Scotland!
I thought THE STARLET LETTER was very fun! Wonderful, crazy cast; quite cute.