Gaby Anderson: On Writing
I began writing in bits and pieces. Bits of conversations with friends and family; my dad reading my work, telling me I’m no Shakespeare, but to keep going. Friends mentioning they’d re-read my weird emails just for fun.
Then the pieces. An idea about a family who would represent the lovely, offbeat Hungarians I grew up with. My paternal grandmother, the ringleader, The Queen of The Hungarian Mafia*, and the tight-knit immigrants who came to Montreal after escaping their country during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
I had a few characters: Two parents and a daughter who would operate a small restaurant in a fictional Florida town. But I needed more. A vehicle to move the plot from beginning to end.
All this time, life was happening. Marriage, babies, divorce. I had no opportunity to develop the adventure lurking in the back of my mind.
In November 2000, my father died suddenly. His loss felt violent, an insult that left me without the only person I’d ever counted on.
About a year after his death, I started writing. As therapy, a way to heal.
And that life thing kept on going; a second marriage to a wonderful man I’d known since college, my beautiful daughters, my job.
I continued working on the fictional town, now named Dufferin Beach, but it was messy and disorganized.
When we moved to Atlanta in 2011, my husband urged me to join The Atlanta Writers Club. That first meeting was where South of Happily was reborn, five pages at a time. I learned about the industry and the complicated craft of writing from a group of people who have since then become part of my family.
Still, I was busy with my day job, school activities, graduations, college…and it wasn’t until about 2019 when the story felt close. Solid enough to query. So, I did. And then the rejections came, and the tears, and days of wanting to give up.
The few agents who asked for the full manuscript responded with positive feedback, some of which shaped the book as it is today.
In early 2022, I submitted South of Happily to Black Rose Writing after hearing some friends from the critique group were having their books published there with excellent results.
Within a week of submission, I heard back. Their acquisition team loved my manuscript, and they were prepared to offer me a contract. Publication date, January 12th, 2023. South of Happily was on its way.
A story with levels.
The primary: The vehicle taking you from point A to B: Katy Kiss, a young woman who has a “bad picker”, trying to divorce a man she picked badly.
The secondary. Depth and character development. Katy, the first-generation daughter of Hungarian immigrants who doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere. Not to the “old” country, not to the new. She’s sweet, snarky, honest, and makes so many terrible choices, the reader will groan and say “No! Don’t do it!”
She will anyway.
Jesse, her best friend, who says winning in court is better than sex.
Her parents, gallivanting on the vacation of a lifetime.
The shrink. A good one, because I live in the world of behavioral health. It was important for me to create a therapist who is effective, uplifting, and entertaining. I wanted to show what good therapy looks like.
And a few others…
Level three: Cracking open Katy Kiss’s head so everyone can see the goopy mess inside. This is where things get deep. Where people get hooked on this protagonist, and where the most common comment comes from after someone reads the book.
“Where’s the second book? I need some more Katy Kiss.”
*Queen of The Hungarian Mafia. Published in 2021. See the link on my website.
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About the Author:
Gaby Anderson is a first generation Hungarian-Canadian, born in Montreal, Quebec. When she was a year old, her family moved to New Jersey, then Paris, back to Canada, and finally to the U.S. where she’s lived ever since.
She’s married to one of her best friends from college, has two amazing daughters, and many (many) animals from the local shelters.
Her first memory of writing is from elementary school. After getting into a fight with a friend, she composed a story about turning her into a potato. Eventually the two made up, but the spark was lit, and a writer was born.
After college, her dad read a short story she’d written.
His response was, “You’re no Shakespeare, but keep going.”
So she did.
Gaby has worked in the restaurant industry, commercial and group travel, private aviation, and pharmaceutical instrumentation. She currently works in behavioral health management.
Her husband calls her a Renaissance Woman with mad-skills.
This means she can catch a softball with one hand while holding a giant turkey leg with the other.
Website: www.Anderson-Author.com
Instagram: gaby_anderson_author
Facebook: Gaby Anderson-Author
SOUTH OF HAPPILY
In the coastal town of Dufferin Beach, Katy Kiss wants more from life than flinging food in her family’s Hungarian restaurant. She’s searching for the hope she had as a child when her immigrant grandmother would pinch her cheek and say, “go finding your happily.”
But Katy isn’t feeling the hope with her philandering husband who communicates in angry emojis now that their marriage is headed to divorce court. And if she’s being honest, even on her wedding day, the only thing she felt was queasy, like when you eat bad shrimp.
Therapy might get her closer to happily but surviving fifty minutes of psychological interrogation is hard without obsessing about raspberry donuts or wondering why the couch, carpet and wall color in her shrink’s office are all the same shade of kill-me-now-beige…and why every decision she makes is wrong.
When a crisis sends her far away from home, the secrets hidden in the Kiss family closet begin spilling out. Secrets that change everything Katy knows, and suddenly, finding happily is the last thing on her mind.
BUY HERE
Category: On Writing
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