The Photo of 2022 shows that most beautiful sight for any author: one's book in a bookstore.
Specifically, in December of this year, I saw (and snapped a photo) of the Spanish version of my dear short story collection, Our Lady's Troubadour, for sale in the local section, clearly visible from the street, at Mil Hojas Bookstore, Zamora, Spain.
Massive changes in the book industry in the last twenty years have made it frustrating and inconvenient for most authors to see this sight as e-commerce and ebooks overwhelm the printed word. I grew up before the internet (gasp!), and seeing one's book in the store always seemed a glamourous, giant step to authorial stardom.
That kind of deep-seated impression doesn't fade easily, so when I saw my book in my local bookstore, I felt in my blood and bones that this was a beautiful sign of success.
Due to my excitement in sharing this photo with everyone I knew, at least this copy sold. I know because the reader brought it to me to sign, telling me he'd already read it in ebook and was now making a gift of it to his son-in-law. What a tremendously flattering situation for my beloved book!
He went on to say that he couldn't get over how someone not from Spain could think of these things and write them so authentically. Again, so flattering I almost didn't know what to say.
But of course, he'd made a tiny mistake. Everyone at this blog knows my soul is Spanish, right?
This photo, objectively nothing special in itself, has also been chosen as 2022's Photo of the Year because it was taken in 2022 and showcases just one of my publications from 2021.
It can't showcase something from 2022 because no such writing exists.
I've spent all of 2022 working very hard for income to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. I've written two short stories (at the most) that have not been published. Comparison is odious in general, but at the end off 2022, it's hard not to feel like it's come up short.
So, with this photo as inspiration, I'm looking at 2023 head-on to be my best writing year yet. Here's to attaining and surpassing realistic and idealistic goals!
The steps between completing an excellent novel and becoming a published author can be painful and confusing, and frankly, most authors would rather skip them and get to "the good parts." The ones I'm thinking of include researching and querying agents and publishers, receiving multitudes of unhelpful rejections or brushoffs, wading through contracts, and waiting, waiting, waiting.
In the case of my Seven Noble Knights, I experienced all of the above plus an evisceration that ended up vastly helpful to the complete rewrite of the beginning of the novel.
When Seven Noble Knightswas accepted for publication, it felt like my writerly dream come true--with all of the trepidation something like that can cause. (I read somewhere that writing long fiction is the most cognitively complex task known to brain researchers. Input from all directions! Is it any wonder that every moment of a writer's life is fraught with mixed feelings? This is not a profession for wimps.)
It turned out to be a long journey from acceptance to publication. I'm thinking about this now because this week, my contract with Bagwyn Books has been terminated and I've received the publishing rights back. Which is to say, Seven Noble Knights is again an unpublished manuscript.
The contract came to an amicable end based on mutually recognized issues at Bagwyn that have nothing to do with my novel. I'm pleased to have the rights back under auspicious circumstances. All the options are open, which is ideal and also scary.
It also feels like starting over, but it's really not. Seven Noble Knights has already debuted to critical praise from the Historical Novel Review and thrilled at least two book clubs. I fulfilled my dream of giving a reading and doing a signing at the Harvard Book Store. Seven Noble Knights has rubbed elbows with the Book Doctors, countless luminaries at the Historical Novel Society Conference and the Tin House Summer Workshop, and was the focal point of a lightning-fast radio interview.
My options include researching and approaching more agents and/or publishers, or redoing the launch and publishing myself, or letting it rest for a while until the time is right. I'll definitely consult with a few of my writer friends who have gone through something similar (rights reversion is not uncommon in the volatile publishing industry) before I make a final decision.
So there you have it. Seven Noble Knights will soon be unavailable for purchase. It's an end that promises an even brighter beginning.
Hold onto your bloody cucumbers! Great things are on their way!
UPDATE: Seven Noble Knights will be available wherever fine books are sold (particularly here) from Encircle Publications December 11, 2020!
My trip to Massachusetts last week was the culmination of so many hopes and dreams. It was also the first time I'd been back to the place where I met my husband without him. Friends, beauty, and acute loss combined to create an emotionally complex triumph for my writing career.
Reading at the Harvard Book Store is the most obvious validation I've had of my book baby, Seven Noble Knights. I've been planning this event since before my husband passed away so unexpectedly. I always thought he would come with me, be his wonderful supportive self, and take photos and videos. I had to look elsewhere for the support I needed, and am amazed and thrilled that I found it.
Among the awesome people who attended the event were the other reader, talented memoirist Nadine Kenney Johnstone, author of Of This Much I'm Sure; Jennifer S. Brown, author of Modern Girls; Rick Heller, author of Secular Meditation; and Maile Hulihan, author of the forthcoming comedy Trinity of Bitches. Their enthusiasm helped me focus on the wonderful things about the evening.
I've rarely seen anything more beautiful than my book baby for sale in the Harvard Book Store.
Right next to checkout, ready for the next eager reader! Looks like it's already sold a copy or two...
I wanted the audience to love my epic novel as much as I do, so I read from it with great gusto.
Want to see the reading in action? You can because of kindness and support from my college creative writing advisor and dear friend, who took the video.
After the reading, Nadine Kenney Johnstone and I took questions from the audience. We discussed inspiration, how to get the writing done even when moving across the country, our next projects and sequels, working with an academic press, the lost medieval epic poem on which the novel is based ("It doesn't get more exciting than that!"), and the value of human life in the tenth century in light of the excerpt's mention of a "homicide fee." One audience member astutely pointed out that Seven Noble Knights would make a great television series. I'm not the only one who thinks so!
On a side note, look at the book behind Nadine: The Regional Office is Under Attack! This is by Manuel Gonzales, with whom I'm going to have the honor of working this July at the Tin House Summer Workshop!
Nadine also spoke about the reliving/processing/healing effects of writing her memoir and I wondered if that was in my future, too.
One of the prettiest city blocks in the entire USA
I jumped on the digital book bandwagon wholeheartedly in 2008, when my husband-to-be gave me a Kindle for my birthday. Thank goodness, because we've moved around so much and books aren't easy to move, and I've had such long periods living with my stuff in storage (now being one of those times). If I didn't have the portability of ebooks, I would be reading much less.
But...
A physical book is such a magical object. No matter how cheap, a book doesn't have the same presence in the world as an anonymous table, for example. It's a physical artifact that can reach across time and give insights into other human beings as well as record information. It communicates with us profoundly after the most basic training. And of course, there's the possibility of pictures!
I've been feeling a little burned out from all the digitization lately, and then I went to a new writers group where they happened to be talking about the way staring at screens all day can ruin your eyesight. That decided me: in order to recharge, I would purchase and read an honest-to-God book that had already been edited by someone else, and just enjoy it.
I went last weekend to my local independent bookstore (which happens to be the beloved Quail Ridge -- amazing place!) and got Magnificence by Lydia Millet, an extraordinary writer I can't recommend enough. If I don't do a review of that book, it's only because I'm using it to get away from all those duties and just enjoy the act of reading, my chosen world. Just read it!
Behold the wonder of an actual book!
We saw some gadgets for sale in the store that accomplish with only the thumb what I'm doing here with thumb and pinky.
So, the dust jacket has that weird faux-skin feel you get from the new matte finish. It ooks me out a little, and I find myself holding the outside of the book by the rich yellow actual covers. They have that rough-smooth burlap texture you expect with an expensive hardcover. The spine is tight and resistant to opening, so the book demands to be touched in order to stay open. The pages have a razor-sharp edges that are already softening in this humid environment, and the letters stand out crisply from the the light creme-colored pages. The fragrance, typical to new books, must be actively sought out. When you do, you'll be welcomed with the fresh, sweet odors of the ink and glue and the potential for countless years of loving use.
New book bliss.
What type of book appreciator are you? I'm definitely a "cherisher." Find out here.
I introduced my enormous project, Seven Noble Knights, on this blog in early 2011 with an exciting announcement: my "pitch" was up for reader voting at the Book Doctors' NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza. (See that post here. The Book Doctors' link is still active, so you can still see the pitches I was up against.)
At that point, I knew I would one day finish the book, but I never dreamed I would have the opportunity to attend one of these Pitchapalooza sessions in person. Happily, I heard about the one that took place at Anderson's (fabulous independent) Bookstore in Naperville this last Saturday just in time to make a snap decision about what to do with the weekend and the gas money.
You have one minute. Sixty seconds only!
The way it works is that they randomly select twenty writers from all those in attendance and those writers give all the information they can about their book in just sixty seconds. It's meant to be like the pitch you would write in your query letters, but it also helps make writers more orally articulate about what makes their books so wonderful. The panel of judges in Naperville included The Book Doctors (Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published among other achievements), as well as a knowledgable middle grade author and charming representative of Loyola Press whose names I lost in all the excitement. After all the presentations, they chose a winner who received a most coveted prize: an introduction to an agent or publisher in their book's genre.
It was two hours of laughter and nerves. I convinced myself that because there were forty or fifty writers in attendance, and Seven Noble Knights had already been randomly chosen before, it could not possibly be again. Just in case, I had my pitch pared down to a one-minute delivery time and printed out in the leaves of my notebook. My unspeakably wonderful husband took photos of the event. And then, when my name was called, he took a video of my pitch.
Yes, I was randomly selected again! It's a sign, folks. This book is going places. The video of my pitch is hard for me to watch, but please be aware that I was suffering some intense stage fright. I'm thrilled I was actually speaking coherent sentences!
The delivery sounds pretty fast to me -- I wanted to fit a lot in -- but these guys are from the New York publishing scene. They can listen fast. They all seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. The video doesn't include it, but The Book Doctors actually said, "I can tell you're a writer just by listening to you speak, and that you're the right person to write this book." How often do you get that kind of outside, impartial validation of the work you love to do? Not often!
That's the back of my head. The front of it is receiving great wisdom.
And trying to take notes with a hand that's shaking with nerves!
I got lots of really great feedback I'm looking forward to using to further hone my pitch. Some of the feedback is in this video.
I had purposefully left out the comparisons with popular books, planning to look around some more and really think it over. But they gave me the most to think about with the YA suggestion. This is not the first time someone has said my book might be YA. I've been through a lot of discussions about what distinguishes YA from general adult, and it's ranged from sex to violence to the ages of the protagonists and grade level of the language. But these fine panelists made the unique suggestion that the pacing of the book has a lot to do with which shelf a book belongs on. While Seven Noble Knights is definitely fast-paced, I remain skeptical that liking a lightning-fast story is the domain of any one age group. I've got more investigating to do before I can decide how to categorize the novel. I'd hate to say it's YA just because that's what will sell.
I didn't win this round, although my husband swears I must have been first runner-up. The prize went to a well-presented book about a gay hockey player in Chicago in the 1920's. It goes to show, different and defined are what counts most when finding your audience.
To cap off the whirlwind day at Anderson's, I spoke briefly with Arielle and Henry David and it turned out that they remembered my pitch from two years ago! It's always good to be memorable.
You guessed it: I love reading! I read National Geographic cover to cover every month. I read novels, the crazier the better, and I read history and even historical (not usually hysterical) fiction. What do you read?
Attention, Pittsburgh, PA residents! Today is the opening day of Fleeting Pages, a "pop-up" bookstore housed in a closed Borders. Get down there soon, because, as a pop-up often does, this one will fade fast and close within a month!
Fleeting Pages is a great way to support indie publishers and authors. Look at the "In Stock" section of the website closely and you'll see one Jessica Knauss. In the store, there are two, count 'em, two copies of Tree/Housesigned by the author. As with any aspect of Fleeting Pages, you can also shop for these online.
I'm especially pleased to get Tree/House involved with Fleeting Pages in Pittsburgh, PA, because the book is set in Pennsylvania and the haunting black and white pictures now in the print edition were taken in the wilds of that great state.
But, this store is a fabulous idea in any state. I only wish I could support them more. Best of luck to you, Fleeting Pages!
