![]() ![]() The book were designed for Scholastic Clubs and Fairs titles and sold more than 600,000 copies, and STILL got turned down by Barnes and Noble. The book itself was a risk, a niche, but I had an editor who championed me and a team who believed in my work and nearly 3 years after release, that book is still selling strong.Īlso in the midst of the dear and chaos and loss of that first series, I signed a work-for-hire contract for an early Middle Grade at Scholastic. And that, over the next four years, would restore my faith in myself and my industry. It was a strange supervillain origin story and it took me to a new publisher, Tor, that took a chance on me. And it was a secret, a sheltering of the creative process so that that no publisher could take away what the writing of it gave me. A book to restore my joy, to remind me why I did this masochistic thing. And my anger, my frustration, my stubborn resolve was louder than my fear, so I sat down and wrote something else. ![]() (The hardcover of THE ARCHIVED was just taken out of print.)Īt 25, I was scarred, terrified that my career was over, because I’d given something everything I had, and it wasn’t enough, and I didn’t understand how or why or what I was supposed to do next, and part of me wished I’d walked away back when that first book didn’t sell, but I didn’t. It had earned out, but still under-performed by some invisible, unknowable measurement. That one got a bit more traction, and a loyal cultish following, but by the time its sequel, THE UNBOUND, hit shelves, I’d been informed that the publisher wouldn’t be finishining the trilogy. Instead I wrote THE ARCHIVED, about a library of the dead. I wrote a sequel, THE DARK REMAINS, but the publisher decided after it was written that they’d rather have something else, so back into the drawer it went. The book was in a select number of stores for a very short time, 1-2 copies max, and disappeared by the end of its first season. It didn’t get much press aside from the fact it was a debut (the industry loves to tout debuts, as though lack of experience is the natural precursor to massive success). It was called THE NEAR WITCH, and the summer after I graduated, it sold to Disney. Two sing-song lines about a village and a witch and a secret in the wind. ![]() Plus I had this idea swimming through my head. It would have been easy to walk away–failure isn’t fun, and I was pretty good at other things that wouldn’t take so much flesh, but I couldn’t bear the thought I was a fluke. I was a college senior when I decided to try again. Five times getting all the way to the door and then being told it wasn’t good enough to go through. A literary agent, a year on sub to publishers, five separate acquisitions meetings. I wrote my first novel as a sophomore, an acid trip through the underworld that will never be published, but it got close enough for me to get my first true tastes of failure. I started writing when I was a kid, poetry mostly, didn’t try my hand at anything longer than a short story until I was in college. It’s taken me 9, so if that means I’m ahead of the curve, so be it. These days I see my name paired more and more with the words “overnight success”, and I’ve heard that the average overnight success takes 10 years. The photo doesn’t do the feelings justice. When I found not one, but two major displays–a table stand and a wall runner–I stood very still, trying to make a memory, and then, realizing I couldn’t be counted on, I snapped a photo instead. I’d just walked into a bookshop in Edinburgh, hoping, as many author do, to spot my own work tucked away somewhere on the shelf. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post over on Tumblr about success. ![]()
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