On brick walls, turning tides, and a life-changing book deal

It’s strange to sit on the beach and watch the exact moment the tide turns. A subtle tilt in the balance of things. Stranger still when the tide has spent two years out, and then the next time you look up, the waves are lapping at the soles of your feet. 

That’s how my career has felt, these past few years. A long fallow period, a tide waned. And then, with a suddenness I still don’t understand, the sea came back to meet me.

On the day The Society For Soulless Girls was published in the UK, I couldn’t stop crying. I thought that was it for me. I had no more books under contract, but not for lack of trying. I’d written the book of my heart, a strange speculative thing about art and humanity and connection, and it died on sub in 2021. And then I wrote another book of my heart—a middle grade romp through the afterlife, which I remain so proud of—and it died on sub a year later.

I felt like my writing was better than ever, but that genuinely boundary-pushing, genre-defying, creatively ambitious work wasn’t getting published, because of the market.

Yet what it came down to was the thing that’s saved me over and over again in this industry: I had another book. 

Another card to play. Another chess move. Sometimes you don’t need to see the whole path forward, just the next step.

I also had my relentlessly optimistic, Leslie Knope-ish belief that everything was going to work out, to the point where many of my friends and family were genuinely concerned for my sanity. I think they probably saw a cartoon character throwing herself at a brick wall again and again and again, expecting it to end differently.

But the thing about brick walls is that they often break before you do.

You can read the full article here.

How do I even start to talk about this? I’ve seen so many of these ‘major’ book deals (meaning over $500k, which, what?) announced over my ten years in the industry, and rarely do I see the numbers acknowledged in any real sense, so let me just say: I know it’s bonkers. It has completely and utterly changed my life.

Every time I think about it, I get a weird little lightning bolt straight to the veins. Every time I remember I don’t have to go back to my day job, it’s like taking a sip of warm tea under a blanket. It has brought me so much peace.

And let me tell you, it means so much more that this happened for my tenth book than if it had happened for my first. I know now that it’s not the default experience. I know how rare it is. Truthfully, I always thought this kind of splash was reserved for shiny debuts or huge viral bestsellers, and I’m . . . neither. So it’s incredibly affirming to know that all it came down to, in the end, was the book.

Our Infinite Fates—a dark, twisted love story spanning 1,000 years, transcending time and fate and gender—means so much to me. I poured my entire soul into it. Thirty-something years of feeling like I loved too much, too hard, when everyone else seemed so good at keeping distance. Thirty-something years of intense, often debilitating anxiety over losing the people in my life. Thirty-something years of trying and failing to communicate just how it feels for your heart to be an open wound. Until, maybe, now.

The few days or weeks when Our Infinite Fates first sold will stay with me forever. The feeling of all these incredibly talented editors from around the world connecting with this story in such a raw way . . . I don’t know if I can put that into words. Maybe it’ll take another thirty-something years.

Anyway, all of this is not to say that I believe the tide will stay in forever. My future will likely contain more fallow periods. Times when what I’m writing is once again too weird for the market, the market, the market. Times when I can’t see the whole path forward, only the next step. 

But I have to learn not to be afraid of the low tide. It’s the natural order of things. I just have to gaze out to it, and think: huh, the tide is low. I guess I should write another book. 

And keep slamming myself at the brick walls of publishing, because they are not unbreakable.

(Please excuse the sustained mixing of metaphors. I’m all up in my feelings today.)

Laura x

P.S. yes, all of my posts on Writerly Ephemera will be this earnest. I’m in my thirties now, and I’m done trying to be funny or cool. Sincerity and emotional honesty have changed my storytelling and my career, and there’s no going back.