Twelve Lessons from One Book

And just as many years

Hey friends,

Thank you for the robust discussion on the comment thread for subscribers last week! My notebook is overflowing with new ideas to write about here. (Subscribe here if you missed it!) One of those suggestions was more stories and interviews with authors/clients about what worked in their journey, and what didn’t. I knew I wanted to write about Joy Callaway even before this discussion, but knowing how much you readers want to hear things like this makes it even more sweet.

Joy’s book THE GRAND DESIGN comes out today. Gah, I love this book. It is the perfect distillation of what I want in historical fiction: fantastic writing and about a woman in the workplace. This one is set in West Virginia at The Greenbrier hotel focusing on two timelines, starting in 1908 and 1946, which is also the sweet spot for me re: time and place. I’ve tweeted this before, probably repeatedly, lol. THE GRAND DESIGN is about Dorothy Draper, arguably one of the first independent, female interior designers in America, and the personal sacrifices she had to make to reach her professional heights in that day in age. Go google pictures of The Greenbrier. I’ll wait. It’s so worth it.

So, I went back in my email to remind myself how Joy and I started working together, and I discovered that Joy actually queried me TWELVE YEARS AGO. This is for a book I don’t think was ever published and (Joy, I am sorry, but I know you will laugh about this, too), it was 145,000 words long!!!! It was also historical fiction and I am SURE Joy is laughing about this right now! (In fact, reader, she just called that book “a train wreck” to me.) That is too long for my tastes. I didn’t offer on that book (and not just because it was long. It was not an auto-reject situation) and when Joy queried me again many years later, I did not remember that first book at all. (Lesson #1: Not selling your first book does not doom your career.) (Lesson #2: Agents don’t remember every book they reject. You can try another one when ready.) Joy went on to get an agent with another book, and published two historical novels: The Fifth Avenue Artists Society and Secret Sisters. See? Things worked out.

Until they didn’t. Joy and her first agent amicably parted ways due to their interests diverting. (She told me as much in her query letter.) (Lesson #3: Changing agents is not the end of the world nor mark you as damaged goods.) At the end of 2018, on December 30th in fact, Joy sent me another query. (Lesson #4: There’s no wrong day to query.) It was for the book that would become THE GRAND DESIGN, and I responded the next day (Lesson #5: Get a better work-life balance, Kate). I read it right away. She sited a MSWL tweet of mine where I’d said I was looking for books “about women getting shit done in the 20th century.” She recognized that her story was exactly this, and she was right! That’s why I read it ASAP.

I requested the full in December and finished it by early March, 2019. But I didn’t think it was ready to go. I thought it needed revisions, and I shared my ideas and invited her to revise and resubmit. She was very receptive to this and said she was up for working on it. I figured she was off to the races.

Then, in May, when I was on a solo vacation for my 40th Birthday, I was reading Joanna Scutts’ THE EXTRA WOMAN: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It, which I HIGHLY recommend, and there was a whole chapter on Dorothy Draper. (This is non-fiction.) So I emailed Joy to see how it was going and recommend the book to her, if she hadn’t already read it. She hadn’t! But she’d also gotten some offers of rep and she was that very week deciding on who to choose. OH NO, I thought, I’m going to miss out on this author! I messaged back, from poolside, lol, asking how revising was going and she said she hadn’t started yet, but she had made a lot of notes about it. (Lesson #6: You don’t have to jump into an R&R if you don’t want to.) Now, here’s where it gets pretty a-typical. In general, I would not take on an author without reading a revision first. But I really liked this book! It was exactly what I was looking for! I agreed to review the notes to see if I thought they were on the right track and she said she would hold off making a rep decision.

I read the notes. I liked them. We had a chat on the phone, and really hit it off. I offered her representation, even without the revision. (Lesson #7: This is not typical. I would not recommend trying this to get out of the work of a revision, not that’s what Joy did, lol.) And two days after I checked in about the book, she accepted my offer of representation. We were both thrilled. I had an extra fruity cocktail by the pool that day.

That was May, 2019. From there, Joy did the revisions and I think we did three or four additional full edits of the book that year. Dual timeline books are tricky and this had to be just right to really capture the reader’s attention in both parts of the story. It didn’t go on submission until January, 2020, starting with her option requirement with the publisher of her first two books. They didn’t pick up the option. It happens. There had been some staff turnover at her publisher and the new editor didn’t love the book. That was ok! That’s not unheard of. Onward! (Lesson #8: Your publisher not picking up your option book is not the end of the world.) It was time for a broad submission.

And you know what day I sent it out widely? March 16, 2020. The next day, my kid’s school closed down because of the pandemic. I am crying laughing at this timing. We didn’t know! Oh what sweet summer children we were.

Then it was April, May, June. The summer passed. Then the fall and we hadn’t gotten any nibbles on the book. (Lesson #9: A long submission doesn’t always mean a book is dead in the water.) We were all struggling. The world was struggling. It was a dark time and we just had to roll with it, as far as worrying about selling books was concerned. There wasn’t anything else we could do.

That fall, I sent it to more editors. I don’t always do a second round, because my first rounds are pretty robust, and not all genres have a deep enough bench, so to speak, to fill a second round. But this one did. Joy told me about a new imprint I hadn’t even heard about that was just starting up: Harper Muse. They looked great! We sent it to them. (Lesson #10: You are a team with your agent.)

And you know what? THEY BOUGHT IT. In January, 2021, they made an offer for two books. I remember where I was when I got the email—on the bus taking my kid home from school. I was so excited we missed our stop!!!! I told Joy and we were thrilled. Is thrilled even the right word? Elated! Overwhelmed! Thankful! Delighted!

We said yes. Harper Muse has been an INCREDIBLE partner on this book. Stellar editing. (Lesson #11: There’s always more editing to do.) Fabulous design. Top notch marketing and publicity. We could not be happier.

And today the book is out in the world. And there’s another one coming. And more exciting news after that. Working with Joy is, yeah I’ll say it, a joy. This book has been a journey. And the final lesson? #12: The path will never be straight, but it will be yours.

Go read Joy’s book. It had quite a journey to get here. I can’t wait to do it all again.

XXOXOXOOX,

Kate