My Book is Three Weeks Old and I Am Not Okay
Lining up a book tour was exciting. It felt productive and affirming. Every time a bookstore or coffee shop or market said yes, I interpreted that to mean my book was worthy. I lined up event after event. I ordered in (more than) enough inventory. I marketed to the best of my abilities.
And then I crashed. Hard. And I was only half way through.
I’d done my Saturday event in Owen Sound—a signing at Coles—and then I’d driven to Barrie to meet my husband who was there for band practice. He’d taken our camper van (my pride and joy) and it had broken down on him (my greatest fear) and he needed me to follow him home the next morning to make sure he made it—leaving early enough to pack up and make it to my next event that Sunday afternoon.
I was exhausted. The van wouldn’t start. We boosted it. It died on Bayfield Street, and we boosted it again while frustrated cars went around us. I followed it out of town, sipping at my Tim Hortons coffee, listening to Luke Wallace because I needed to be reminded that the fight is worth it. My son texted me: Do you know where you have more packing tape? I asked Siri to text him back. Siri ignored me. I asked again. Nothing.
And then I screamed at her. Like, really screamed.
Nothing.
So I clicked voice-to-text and told my son where he could find more packing tape, hot tears rolling down my cheeks as Luke Wallace sang about carrying the hope.
There is something beautifully cathartic about crying in the car. If you’re alone and just allowing yourself a quiet moment to get really real, you get to feel all the things you need to feel and then you can move on, hustle to your next event, and act like life is grand and everything is hunky-dory, and look at you! Aren’t you a glowing, successful author!
I cried from Minesing to Maxwell. Not messy, snotty sobbing. Just quiet tears that let the demons out without making my face swell up.
As a person who doesn’t raise their voice for anything but excitement, the shock of screaming at a tiny computer was an immediate indication that I was beyond exhausted and that I was not okay.
But I rallied, as I do, and I tempered my tears with some deep breathing, and then the van died again and we had to boost it in Flesherton.
I thought I had it together. I waited patiently as the battery charged. I feigned calm and collected. The van started and I continued following, but in the back of my exhausted mind I was imagining what it would be like to admit she had, in fact, run her course, and that we might, in fact, have to tuck her in for the long sleep.
Me and my pretty van 💛
We weren’t naive when we bought ourselves a 1981 vintage camper, but we were wearing rose-coloured hippie glasses. She gave us six really good years, and then the last two years have been a bit of a struggle. Problem after problem. Is she done? I was imagining putting her to pasture, turning her into a little bunkie in our field—a safe and familiar writing escape in a spot that could catch both the sunrise and the sunset—planting flowers around her tires while they slowly rotted out from underneath her...
And then, coming west down Highway 4, another Roadtrek approached. I watched as my husband tossed his hand out the window in the three finger salute. I saw the enthusiastic return of the other driver. (Roadtrek owners are like Jeep owners, but a million times more chill—my current state notwithstanding.) And I started blubbering again. Like a lame dumb baby who just couldn’t get it together and just needed someone to pat her on the back and say, “There there, sweet girl, everything is going to be okay.”
And, of course, it was okay. And, of course, I am okay. Mostly.
And we made it home and I rushed to get ready and I showed up to my next event and it was a beautiful, intimate time of reading and answering questions and I was reminded that I am a good writer who wrote a great book even though the last three paragraphs of this blog have started with the word and…
So, what’s the point of this? I guess it’s to reward those of you who pay close attention, who are interested in my life beyond the stories I write, who like to see the gritty underbelly of an author’s reality rather than the mostly shiny successful self I project on social media.
I am thrilled that I have a new book out in the world. I’m proud of it and I’m pleased by the response it’s received from those who have read it. But I wasn’t fully prepared for the mountain I have to scale in order to sell it.
Selling a sequel is next to impossible. IMPOSSIBLE.
Since book two came out I’ve sold more copies of book one. I guess that makes sense, and I’m grateful for any sale I make, but my feelings are hurt for book two. The (likely) thousands of hours I’ve already put into this series means that I’ve (likely) made about 1¢/hour on book two and I think that’s egregious. All signs point to the fact that the success of subsequent books depends on the final book. People are more willing to invest in something that’s complete. I get it. I’ve been there too. But I don’t have to like it. And if I want to cry in my car about it, that’s my prerogative, thank you very much.
This is not a pity me post, so please don’t misconstrue my intentions here. This is a “oh, hey, hi, I’m human” post. Because sometimes people look at what I’m doing and they shake their heads like they’re so proud of me or so amazed at what I’ve accomplished. The whole truth is, I just want to disappear. I want to take my beautiful (miraculously healed) van, park beside the ocean, turn off the internet, and not come back until I’ve written the whole series. Of course, I can’t do that, and so I’ll clear my head by crying on Highway 4 and then I’ll show up polished and smiling for another event because if I stop hustling, I’ll lose a piece of myself that I actually really like, and people who don’t like themselves can’t make the kind of art that lights them up. And I guess that’s the whole truth of this. I am a selfish creator. I do it for myself. I do it because it feeds my soul. I do it even if no one else shows up. And I do it because filling the gas tank on a 1981 Roadtrek requires a heck of a lot of book sales.
Two hours after car crying, she’s being all shiny and authory at a bookstore event
I don’t know what I need from you, dear reader. I think I just want to be seen as I am in the messy glory of it all. Don’t tell me I’m doing a good job. I’d rather hear that you see yourself in my humanness—because that’s where we can really connect, and that’s where real stories really get to bloom.
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Forty years ago, Rajiv Montgomery Noah built Eden—a sanctuary beneath a dome in the northern Ontario wilderness, designed to shelter two hundred souls as the world burned. When The Trees All Burned is his testament to hope and hubris, a meditation on who survives and what survival means when everything familiar is ash.
Now, in Where the Ashes Find Their Grave, the dome’s foundation cracks. A man with a borrowed name brings old world appetites into the new one. The sun refuses to rise. And beneath Rajiv’s perfect system lies a secret so catastrophic that everything he sacrificed to build may become meaningless. The answer to what he’s done will cost him everything.
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