There and Back Again

There and Back Again

Sarah Beth Martin

They say it’s better to have loved and lost. This usually applies to relationships, but it can also relate to experiences, goals, or other missed opportunities. Twenty years ago, I had a top tier literary agent and a book deal with a mid-sized publisher. I didn’t realize how fortunate I was to have that—until I lost it. 

Not that I hadn’t worked hard to get there. I’d spent months sending queries and sample chapters to agents by snail mail and had a pile of rejection letters to show for it. Eventually, I received full manuscript requests from a handful of agents on my top ten list, and a phone call from one who didn’t accept the book but gave me solid advice. Looking back, I’m still stunned about that call and now realize those things don’t happen often. 

But that wasn’t the call. Several months later, I finally received that call from one of my dream agents. She wanted to represent me and my novel, The One True Ocean, and my world changed. I finally had hope for my book and knew I hadn’t wasted years of my life for nothing. 

It had been five years—a project that began with sticky notes on my day job work desk, transcribed each night on my sluggish PC. I had published short stories and essays, and had gone through the submission waiting game with literary journals and magazines. But submitting full manuscripts by postal mail was tiresome and costly, and it required patience. One had to wait weeks, sometimes months, for any response. 

My agent worked tirelessly for a year before selling The One True Ocean to Sourcebooks in 2002, to be published in 2003. Sourcebooks also offered me an option clause, which gave me the opportunity to turn my one book deal into a two-book deal based on a synopsis and two chapters of my next work in progress. I did have a novel in progress, but it was only a seedling of a thing. I’d become so overwhelmed by the pre-publication chaos that I left little space in my brain for writing. I had nothing good to give to my publisher, and had to throw something together. They didn’t offer me the deal for a second book, and I understood why.

In the years that followed, I let things pull me away from writing. My day jobs—which ranged from drafting to web editing—sucked the creativity out of me. I would go to work with a thousand ideas in my head and come home with zero. I tried jotting down stories while at my desk—the way I had with my first book, but I couldn’t seem to do it anymore. Meanwhile, my agent waited patiently for a new book that I wasn’t writing. I had been given the opportunity to step through a door, but I’d stepped out for a moment, and the door had clicked shut when I wasn’t looking. 

I had promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those writers who stopped writing. But sometimes life gets in the way, and the next thing you know, a decade has passed. You watch others get published while the trends and rules change. Your Twitter feed explodes with writers journaling about their word counts and story ideas. Soon you are stuck in a vicious circle of self-doubt, and fall into the trap of trying to follow trends and please everyone. You stop being yourself, and as a result, stop producing anything good or original.

This happened many times with me, and I constantly had to hit the reset button. Eventually, I found myself not wanting to write at all. It was painful to be standing just outside that world; it was like having someone you love just out of reach. I thought if I could get out of the day job, I could get back to writing. I tried expanding a part time jewelry business so I could work at home. I took on jobs I thought would be less mentally intensive, studied copywriting and took on freelance gigs. But nothing helped gain me the time and mental space I needed. If anything, I spent more time trying to change my work situation, when I could have just been writing. 

Things were happening in my personal life too, everything from losing my father to getting remarried and becoming a stepmom to three boys. My husband told me I should be writing, and that I needed to get back to the book I started a decade earlier. It seemed too daunting a task, especially where I’d abandoned it at 12,000 words in and had such a long way to go. And I wasn’t getting any younger.

But inside, I knew he was right. When I wasn’t immersed in writing a novel, I wasn’t at my best. This was missing from my life, and rather than feel guilty about it, I needed to accept it. Once I did accept it, something clicked. The passion and momentum returned, and I spent the next several months making up for years of not writing. Eventually, I had a finished manuscript of my second novel, In the Vanishing Hour. 

My first thought was to send it to my original agent, so I queried her. But she already had a full client list and now represented few books in my genre. This was the moment I realized how fortunate I had been years before. I should have had more faith in my writing and not allowed things to pull me away from it. There were many reasons I let things go—everything from self-doubt to self-sabotage, but they all came down to fear. 

I knew I’d have to start from scratch, which was emotionally difficult and humbling all at once. I began again, while relearning the rules about social media and email etiquette. I received some requests for full manuscripts and one revision request that didn’t promise representation. The agent and I had different visions for the structure of the book, but she had good advice in other areas, so I agreed to try. I removed a second timeline to give the narrative a more linear structure, but my heart wasn’t in it when I did this, and it showed in the writing. After six months of me scraping away at it, she didn’t offer representation. I was crushed again. 

As much of a disappointment as it was, I understood her reasons. But I had to consider my gut too. Even though the novel had been improved in some ways, it didn’t feel like my novel. The rewrite had removed what I felt was the soul of the story, and it no longer was the book I’d envisioned. I couldn’t simply reinsert the chapters; I would need to rewrite the book again. 

I resurrected the old book alongside the new one, and tore them both apart. I used the knowledge I’d gained from years of querying, revising, reading, not to mention a decade of living, and rewrote it. It took another couple of years, but eventually it became the story it was meant to be. But so much time had passed. I’d spent years learning to be a parent in my 50s, and I still struggled with the dreary day jobs. The clock was ticking, and I didn’t want to spend years on the submission process. 

I’d heard of several publishers that accepted manuscripts without an agent, so I researched them, and found one right in my backyard. Encircle Publications was a small but rapidly growing publisher with solid distribution and an excellent track record of supporting their authors, so I sent my book along. Three months later, I received the publication offer for In the Vanishing Hour that changed my life—again. 

I was in my late 30s when I wrote my first novel, so two decades later, I naturally wished I could give it another edit. That opportunity came as a cherry on top from my publisher as we wrapped up edits for my new book. After nineteen years, I’m thrilled to be publishing not just one book but two, with the reissue of The One True Ocean alongside In the Vanishing Hour.

I’m following my dream again, two decades later. Despite the regrets along the way, I can finally stop thinking about time wasted. There is no too late. 

—

Sarah Beth Martin writes novels that bridge the gap between psychological thriller, mystery, and women’s fiction, and often feature historical settings. She is the author of In the Vanishing Hour (Encircle Publications, October 2022) and The One True Ocean (Reissued by Encircle in 2022). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in several magazines and literary journals, including Cicada, Pearl, West Wind Review, Women Writers, Women’s Books, and Flash Fiction magazine. She lives in coastal Maine with her husband and three cats, with their three sons not far from the nest. She currently is wrapping up her third novel. 

IN THE VANISHING HOUR, Sarah Beth Martin

Massachusetts, Summer, 1951:—When a thirteen-year-old boy drowns in the Charles River, a family is devastated, and the town of Norumbega is changed forever.

Eight years later, Frances Adams lives in the shadow of her dead brother, Mac. At her window dresser job she befriends model Gwen, whose resemblance to Frances inspires her to reinvent herself. When Gwen vanishes into the river and is presumed drowned, Frances becomes obsessed with her memory. She transforms herself into Gwen’s likeness and feels an identity she has not felt before.

An investigation begins, and the police question three young men. Frances and her friend Iris follow them to the local riverside park, where one of the men—the suspicious Harris—mistakes Frances for Gwen. Intrigued by the idea of haunting him, she continues her secret pursuit, immersing herself in the case. As the mystery unravels, shocking revelations about its connection to a long-past family tragedy surface.

Set in the haunting atmosphere of 1950s and 1970s New England, IN THE VANISHING HOUR weaves suspense and mystery into a story about identity, loss, and the secrets best left untold.

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