Well, yeah, so there’s this thing where I signed a book deal. (Some of you are going, “Wait? What?” and some of you are going, “FINALLY.”)
If you don’t know about my not-so-secret life as a romance novelist, you can go here to catch up.
How did I get this book deal? It went like this:
Me: I like to read romance novels. I am a writer. Maybe one of the things I write should be a romance novel. HOW HARD CAN IT BE?
Universe: Um, actually super hard, you asshole.
[Insert laughably bad first manuscript here. Point of view? What’s that?]
[Insert years of rejection here.]
[Insert that one time when I thought I would go on maternity leave and finish my book and get an agent and get a book deal…oh, and care for an infant here.] [In my defense, I do live in Canada, Land of the One Year Mat Leave.]
[Now you should go fix a snack in order to simulate time passing. Eat it and watch a TV show, then get back to me.]
Well then, my friends, I got me an agent. I got me a kick-ass agent. That had always been goal number one. Like, to the extent that I actually avoided having my work seen by editors, which made for a few pathetically-comic situations in which editors wanted to see said work. (More on this in another post. Maybe.) There is more to say here, for sure. I can make entire speeches on the following topics: Why do you need an agent in the current publishing climate? Why do you need an agent when many publishers accept unagented manuscripts? Couldn’t you make 80 bazillion more dollars self-publishing? But I shan’t make them now (the arguments, not the dollars). (More on this in another post. Maybe.)
The relevant point is that said agent called me the day after my 40th birthday to tell me there was interest in my books.
Picture this, if you will: you just turned 40. It was fun. You got a massage and then you went to dinner sans child. However, now you are 40 + one day. And your very-early-January birthday always lines up with the first week back to work after the holidays. And you always extend your holiday overconsumption to your birthday because, come on, when your birthday is this close to New Year’s you might as well round up. So when it is one day past your birthday, the fun is over on SO MANY FRONTS. Holidays over. Time for kale. Back to work. You are 40 and there is NOTHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO EVER AGAIN.
I was, in fact, having a monologue on this very topic to my friend Lulu whilst washing dishes when my agent called. (ON THE OTHER PHONE. Sometimes I want to go back to my 1985 self and be like, you are NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS SHIT.) Then a complicated chain of emails and voicemails and calling back commenced, because my 1985 self is basically still in charge of my life.
So there was some to-ing and fro-ing (not in my heart, just about the contract details) and, lo, a couple months later I have signed a three-book deal with Entangled Publishing. Regencies! Like, it’s 1813 and shit! Maybe you will want to read them! (Probably you should just go back and re-watch Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice but you can only do that for six hours every day, so what the hell else are you going to do with all those other hours?)
So, in summation: Being 40 kind of sucked. Being 40 + one day kind of rocked.