A Long And Winding Roller Coaster

By Daisy Bateman

I thought I had experienced everything publishing could throw at me. Then 2020 showed up and said, “Hold my beer.”

My first book is being published this year. Not the first book I wrote, which was begun longhand in a loose leaf binder, sitting on the lawn outside my college dorm. Not even the first book by me my agent sold to a publisher, almost two years ago. And definitely not the book about the giant underground squid. (We aren’t going to get into that here.)

That first book was not very good, a quality recognized pretty much unanimously by the publishing industry. The second was better, but still well off the mark, and the third had the aforementioned squid problem. But by the fourth book I was finally getting somewhere, enough for an agent to take it on and help me to beat it into shape. Then she started sending it out to editors, who said a lot of nice things, but not “I’ll buy it.” It was frustrating, having swum for so long in the sea of rejection, to finally make it onto the beach and find that it was full of rejections too.

Eventually, all of the “no”s had come back (with the exception of one editor whose non-reply seemed like it was an answer of its own), and it was time to start thinking about the next steps. At this point, I did what I had done every time a book I had written ran out of options: I started writing another one.

Cut to a couple of months down the line, I’m at work when a call comes in from my agent. The last editor not only loves the book but wants to buy it. Needless to say, I was over the moon. And not just our moon. Like, one of Jupiter’s. Friends and family were told, toasts were drunk, plans were made. The only thing I didn’t do was post on social media, because I was saving that for when I had my Publisher’s Weekly announcement, so I could post the screenshot with an overly-casual comment like, “some personal news.” The contract came and I read it carefully, signed and sent it back. All that was left was for the publisher to counter-sign, and the announcements could be made. I could wait for that, couldn’t I?

I found out the imprint was closing from another author’s Facebook post.

I called my agent for confirmation because you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, but there was no mistake. They would still publish the book, but no more after it, and soon they were going to start laying off staff. I wanted to have my book published. But I also wanted to have a career as a writer, and this wasn’t the way to start. So we got the rights reverted, and I went wine tasting in Anderson Valley, where my husband drove and I got absolutely blotto on pinot noir. And that was the end of that leg of my publishing journey.

Except that it wasn’t. Have you ever told a lot of people you’re going to be a published author, and then a few months later that you’re actually not? I don’t recommend it. Altogether, it was a rough autumn, and I’ll admit, I wallowed for a while. But I at least I had the new book to work on.

That book was done in the spring of 2019, and ready to go out for its visits with editors. And then one morning, my agent called and said we had an offer! This time I kept the news to myself, having already snatched defeat from the jaws of victory once, but eventually we had the contract, and the PW announcement, and plenty of rejoicing with just a touch of deja vu. 

It was over a year from the announcement to the release, with edits, cover designs, and those long periods of silence publishing is known for. But around the beginning of this year, things started to pick up. I had blurbs! Preorders! A Kirkus review that didn’t compare my book unfavorably to a bag of flaming dog poop! (I understand that from them, this counts as a rave.) And best of all, my local indie bookstore agreed to host the launch party, a dream of mine for years. Finally, it was actually happening.

Heh.

Well, something happened, all right. For those of you reading this in the distant future, please look up “spring 2020” on your bionic search implants (or, depending on how things turn out, in the cave paintings that describe life in the Before Times). Contemporary readers will already know. Conferences were cancelled, bookstores closed their doors. It hasn’t been a good time for a lot of people and businesses, and small presses are on that list. The ebook came out in June as scheduled, but the print launch was pushed to September, and the publicist was furloughed. There would be no launch party.

Am I aware a lot of people have it much worse than me? Of course I am. Did I spend some time feeling sorry for myself anyway? Of course I did. But I am now a published author with a book out in the world, and that is something no stupid virus can take away from me. My optimism remains extremely cautious, but I’m not giving it up just yet.

As for future projects, what am I doing now? Well, I’m writing another book.

But this time it’s the second in a series.

—

Daisy Bateman is a mystery lover, cheese enthusiast, and world-renowned expert in Why You Should Buy That. MURDER GOES TO MARKET is the first in a new series, in which murder comes to an artisanal market in the food lover’s paradise of Northern California.

In what passes for normal life, Bateman works in biotech. She lives in Alameda, California, with her husband and a cat, only one of whom wears a tuxedo on a regular basis.

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Website: daisybateman.com
Facebook: /daisybatemanauthor
Instagram: @daisybatemanauthor
Twitter: @daisyj

MURDER GOES TO MARKET

If you had asked computer programmer Claudia Simcoe what she expected to come of her leaving San Francisco for the California coast to open a farm-to-table marketplace, “assembles a mismatched team to investigate a murder” would not have been her first guess.
Lori Roth is one of the tenants of the market, or she had been until Claudia learned that the hands making her “hand-dyed” textiles belong to overseas factory workers.

Claudia terminates Lori’s lease, but her hopes that this will be the last she sees of her problem tenant are dashed when she arrives at the marketplace the next morning to find Lori dead, hit over the head with a jar of pickles and strangled with a cheese wire.

The police chief thinks Claudia looks like an easy pick to be the killer, and he closes the marketplace to put the pressure on her. So, Claudia has no choice but to solve the mystery herself. Relying on the tech skills from her previous life and some help from her quirky new friends, Claudia races to save her business and herself before the killer adds her to the region’s local, artisanal murders.

BUY THE BOOK HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing