3/28/24

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Back in 2010, when I was fifty years old, my first book, a novel, was accepted for publication. It’s called The Home For Wayward Clocks.

I’d been writing for my entire life, with my first publication when I was fifteen years old. This was followed by many, many stories and short memoirs and essays, but the novel remained elusive, to the point where I thought it was never going to happen. I went through four agents before I sold the book on my own. The first was a local agent who wanted to branch out into literary fiction, but who had absolutely no idea what he was doing. I knew more than he did. The second agent was someone who was taking over for a very well-known agent and who asked me to come on board. I was delighted. She started trying to market a book that I wrote before Clocks. She kept calling me and cheering, “It’s made it through the first reading at (name of well-known publisher here)!” “A second reading!” “A third!” I was delirious, and then she dropped off the face of the earth. No answers to emails or phone calls. I picked up the phone and called (name of well-known publisher here) directly and worked my way through until I got hold of the acquisitions editor. I explained my situation and who I was and she started digging. “Oh, man,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Kathie. I don’t have any record of your book or that agent. We never received it.”

Heartbroken.

I was hanging out regularly at that time in a writers’ chatroom called the Writers’ Grill – it’s actually where I met Michael, my husband. I told the usual attendees about what happened. A woman I knew fairly well, by online standards, messaged me. Turned out she was the owner of a very well-known agency in New York. She asked to see my book, which was what would eventually become my novel, In Grace’s Time, but then was totally different. She loved it and then advised me on how to break off with the missing agent, which included sending registered mail that said I was no longer under contract with her, and because it was registered, she signed for it, which proved she received the letter. Then began the wait for Grace.

During this time, I’d begun to work on The Home For Wayward Clocks. It took me 3 years to write that book. A year in with this agent and Grace, the agent said she didn’t have anywhere else to go with the book. “Editors are saying it’s too quiet,” she said.

Quiet?

I offered her Clocks and she said it was a beautiful book, but that she “didn’t handle dark stuff.” She told me to write another book.

So I fired her.

I landed another agent, who also owned a well-known agency in New York. She shopped Clocks for a year and failed. She told me to write another book, which I already was, but I fired her anyway.

And then I set out on my own. Not self-publishing – that is not something I would ever do. I wanted to be backed by someone who believed in me so much, they would put their name on my book.

And I found someone. On my own. The Home For Wayward Clocks was released on February 1, 2011, by The Main Street Rag Publishing Company.

I will never, ever, EVER forget what it felt like to receive the box that held my copies of my first published book. I opened the box, took out the first one, cradled it like a baby, and wept.

So then fast forward through thirteen years and thirteen more books. Four other publishers. More novels, plus short story collections, an essay collection, and poetry collections. A total of fourteen books in thirteen years, from someone who was once on the edge of believing even one book would never happen.

And then stop at this week. Oh, this week. Because to answer a question that everyone always asks me, no, it never, ever, EVER gets old.

No, I didn’t receive a box yet in the mail. But I got to see the cover of my next book, the fifteenth, the eighth novel. Don’t Let Me Keep You. And while I didn’t rip open a box (yet), I didn’t pull out the first one (yet), and I didn’t cradle it like a baby (yet!), I did indeed weep.

You would think, being a writer, that I would be able to easily describe what this is like. But it’s difficult. Many writers say it’s like seeing their baby’s face for the first time, and it’s close. But there’s a difference. When you hold your baby, you know, no matter what your circumstances are, that this baby is a product of two people.

But when you hold your book for the first time, you are holding something that is 100% you. Created by you. Only you.

Only me. I wrote every word. And I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote every word.

And this one, of course, I finished the final draft while sitting in the ICU, waiting for my husband to wake up after being hit, then run over by mini-van. I read out loud to him.

And you know, in the beginning after the accident, when I was in what I thought was the worst of it, when I wasn’t sure if Michael was going to live, I stood by his bed and held his hand and wept. A different kind of weeping than when I see my books. But what I said to him was the same as the title of my next novel:

“Don’t let me keep you. If you need to go, you can go. It’s all right.”

He stayed.

And this week, I got to see the cover of Don’t Let Me Keep You. And the feeling was just like it was for The Home For Wayward Clocks. And Enlarged Hearts. And Learning To Tell (A Life)Time. Oddities And Endings. True Light Falls In Many Forms. Rise From The River. In Grace’s Time. Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News. When You Finally Said No. No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See. All Told. Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku. Hope Always Rises.

Hope always rises.

Only me. But…with a husband who chose to stay by my side.

Fifteen books in fourteen years, baby. Amazing.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.