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I’m finally home after nearly an entire month of travel, and not all of it fun. My most immediate trip was to Bouchercon, which to be perfectly honest, was not great. Bouchercon is one of the big author/fan conventions for mysteries and normally I love it—I’m the sort of person who likes doing panels staying up late every night to socialize.
To divulge a little… I have not been having an awesome time with… life lately. I’ve been working on a third book outside of contract (which means I will have to write the whole thing and then go on full submission if I want a deal.) I’m working on the third book in the context of not being really sure how my second book is doing. Second books don’t do as well as debuts—that’s just how things are, but sometimes it feels like my second book was published and just disappeared into the ether. It got no where near as much attention on social media, very little publicity, and only one trade review. So here’s the curse of having a buzzy debut: the next thing will let you down no matter what. It’s particularly frustrating to me because I decided to do a really ambitious book for my second book, rather than doing something easy or perfectly expected. In my view, the second book showcased more of my skills and is therefore better, and earlier in this year I had some frustrating experiences at Thrillerfest where readers/industry people saw me and said, “I didn’t know you had a second book.” (My only consolations are that it appears to be selling decently based purely on word of mouth. I think it will find its readers).
So there’s that hovering over my head. Meanwhile at the same time I have been dealing with some elder care issues. These have been really emotionally draining, frustrating, financially expensive and all the while I’ve felt ill-prepared for this because it feels like no one told me exactly how hard it would be or what was the right thing to do. It felt like I had been well briefed on various topics from the LIFE folder, including getting a career, making a community, having my heart broken, buying a house—but they left off entirely this topic of elder care. You can be someone who’s got your entire life figured out, but guess what, a bomb not of your own making can be thrown into it. Like for example if someone else has shitty health insurance and you have to paw through a disorganized pile of papers to try to figure something out while the insurance company is rejecting an appeal because #America. My friends parents tend to be younger, so I don’t have a ton of people to commiserate with or ask advice. (Just to get on a soapbox for two seconds: you should talk to your parents about this stuff sooner rather than later—things like advanced directives, money, their expectations, etc. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IF YOU HAVE KIDS this should not be an after thought thing you’ve been avoiding—get your shit in order and have a will otherwise you could leave them in a mess, or guess what your system of your husband handing 100% of your finances where you don’t even know where you have bank accounts could turn into a giant flaming mess if you don’t even know what the passwords are and at what banks.)
So a week before Bouchercon I realized that I never got my panel assignment. (It slipped my mind because of the various fires I had been putting out all month, and I was actually out of the country with little to no cell or internet when I realized this.) I contacted the conference organizers who told me I wasn’t put on a panel because I didn’t request to be. Which is weird because not only did I (as I do every year), I also suggested some panel topics (as I typically do) and also offered to moderate—all because exposure the year you get a book published is important. And I do well on panels, so typically it sells a few books. They ended up adding me to one last minute. When I checked into the conference, I didn’t expect to be on the printed schedule—it was too late for that—but I did find out that I was left out of the “authors attending” gigantic program that they hand out to all attendees even though I submitted my bio and picture before the deadline. Then I headed over to the bookstore, which was supposed to stock the books of authors attending the conference who had requested them to be stocked. Guess whose books weren’t there? Mine! Then I showed up at my panel and there was no chair or nameplate for me.
You can see why I wasn’t feeling particularly welcome. And it happened to come at a bad time where I was already feeling invisible with my second book. After I did my panel, which turned out to be good and lively, I showed up for my signing session (of course there was no chair or nameplate for me) and met a number of fans. This cheered me up quite a bit but that was tempered by the fact that they kept saying, “You’re books aren’t for sale here…?” The best I could do was give them a bookmark I had designed that had a QR code on it.
I spent probably an embarrassing amount of time in my hotel room napping and watching Youtube videos, alternating with dealing with a couple of familial freakouts and legal issues, all the while feeling anxious that I wasn’t working on my third book. (the deal to myself was that I would start my major revision after Bouchercon, because doing it while traveling was not realistic.) I did emerge on one of the last nights to get drinks at the bar with some friends and head over to the Flatiron party, which I’m glad I did, because it was good to catch up with some old faces and meet some new debuts. The following night, I also emerged from my cave to socialize at night even though during the day I was too burnt out to go to panels. I’m glad I did that and wished I did it earlier rather than feeling sorry for myself, because talking to other writers, you realize that other people are in the same boat.
On social media you will see a parade of cover reveals, book deal announcements, gushing praise, and supportive families. What you will not see is lamentations about your local indie not stocking your book, nasty emails from readers, authors having to give up on books that have died on submission that are honestly probably better than some of the books that are getting published. I wrote A Step Past Darkness during what was probably the second-worst year of my life, mental health wise. But really the only place where you can talk to someone who understands all that is with a group of writers. I found out that many people had been left out of the author bio book, and virtually no one had their book stocked at the Bouchercon book store (there was some giant snafu that people are pretty pissed about). If you’re unagented, you’re probably fixated on getting an agent and not thinking too much of the struggles that happen behind that wall. But even after you have a book deal, the struggles will shift. It will change from “am I good enough to get an agent” to “am I marketable if I’m doing something different” or “will I ever rise above mid-list” etc. etc. If you’re not part of a community of authors, you will never have that “that happened to me too” or “that happened to my friend Jane Smith—let me connect you with her” or “actually, I also thought such-and-such book was terrible and overrated” or “you can’t trust this editor or agent” conversation.
Sorry for a shortish post that’s kind of a downer. The good news is that I’m not slated for any serious travel for several months and am hunkering down to do my revision. I hope to have something that is extremely nuts-and-boltsy about revising next week. And if you subscribed because you saw me at Bouchercon, check out some of my favorite old posts here (most of the archive beyond two months is paywalled, sorry not sorry).
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Really appreciate the honesty. Thank you.
You were fantastic on our panel and I actually did look around for you later at the conference to chat more about your books and the industry. You weren’t the only without books, late panel assignments etc. I also have a love/hate relationship with these conventions, but I’m always glad after I’ve gone!