It's Our Birthday!

Here's what happened the last time I threw myself a party

The last time I threw myself a party, it was for the launch of my debut novel in 2012. I did a rash thing that I don’t regret: I spent a chunk of my advance money to rent a hall, hire a band and a caller to lead us in contra dancing, and pay a pizza truck to cater the event. Friends and family were excited to celebrate with me, some of them traveling long distances to be there.

The day of the party, a massive rain storm flooded roads, preventing at least a dozen people from reaching us, and the wind was so strong that the pizza truck had to scale back operations. About 50 of us gathered anyway to dance and eat and celebrate. People wrote postcards to their friends to tell them about my book, and we raffled off a bunch of literary prizes. It was a ton of fun.

I have been tempted, at times, to think of that storm (and the sickening fact that I ran over a woodchuck the day before, when it darted out in front of me as I was taking my friend Alison to see the venue) as bad omens. Why? Because after that party, my writing career didn’t exactly do what it was supposed to do.

My book sold modestly. I wrote a second novel, and though my original editor passed on it, another editor at a major publisher wanted it. But she couldn’t get it past her marketing team. They were only interested in second novels from writers whose first book had hit the bestseller list or at least come very close. My agent lost interest after that. Slowly, it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to get another chance. At around the same time, acceptances of my stories by literary journals dried up, too. I have some theories about why, but I’ll spare you the details.

Like anyone born a writer—because I have known since I was a little kid that I wanted to write—I found a way to pivot. I scored a job writing features for a popular New Haven-based online magazine called Daily Nutmeg. Over the course of four and a half years, I criss-crossed every city neighborhood and many outlying towns, met hundreds of people, and wrote more than 580 stories. I took most of the photos, too. The pandemic happened, and I kept going. I earned a small measure of local fame, which was delightful; everywhere I went, people knew me and my work, even if I didn’t know them.

On occasion, I continued to work on my own fiction, though not with the same focused dedication I’d once had. Nevertheless, I eventually pulled together a novel in stories—a collection of linked stories that themselves tell a larger tale of a neighborhood that doesn’t know it’s in crisis until it’s too late. It’s the best work of my career thus far. I pitched it to I don’t know how many new agents—I could count because I have records, but let’s just say there were dozens—and then I started researching self-publishing (usually a bad idea for fiction) and hybrid publishing (expensive) and small presses (only slightly more promising). That novel, too, remains unpublished. Somewhere around 2021, nine years after my novel came out, I really lost steam.

Early in 2022, I left Daily Nutmeg and my longtime teaching gig for a full-time job with an environmental organization, which I love. For a few months, I took a break from writing any projects of my own. I thought it was possible this would be a permanent break. I certainly wasn’t going to write another unpublished novel. But I found I had to write something. So last fall, I launched this newsletter.

Over this first year of Better Book Clubs, I have posted twice a week, with a little break at Christmas and another for a week in the summer. That’s 101 short posts on what I’ve been reading and longer pieces every Sunday on the joys and concerns of readers like you. I’ve been learning what you like and what interests you less, though analytics don’t inspire my content. I pretty much write what I feel like writing, as long as I think it will engage some of you, too.

On this first birthday of Better Book Clubs—technically, this Tuesday—I would love to throw a party. I wish I could bake you all cupcakes, especially those of you who have left comments or told me in person—because some of you know me in “real life”—how much you’re enjoying my posts. You have no idea how much that lifts me up and carries me forward. I wish I could hire a band and dance with all of you and feed you pizza, too, because if you know anything about New Haven, you know we are passionate about pizza. It’s our love food.

Short of a party, what I can do is this: Keep writing stuff I hope you’ll enjoy, and stuff I hope will help your book club, too, if you have one.

I also have a wish list with one gift on it: Will you send me one new subscriber this week? Think about that person who’s always talking about their book club or giving you book suggestions. That person who loves not just to read, but to talk about reading and think about books. I would love to connect with them. You can use the Share button below, then choose one of the methods that will allow you to reach out personally—maybe by copying the link and texting it with a message or by sending an email. Tell your friend why you think they’d like Better Book Clubs. Tell them it’s free. Writing here gives me an audience, and it’s important to me to be writing for someone—for all of you. It would make me super happy on Better Book Clubs’ birthday to have more someones to write for!

The flood and the woodchuck weren’t bad omens, though I still feel bad about the woodchuck. It doesn’t take bad luck for bad stuff to happen in a writing career because writing careers are, by definition, capricious. You have to be tough and nimble. You know you’re a writer if you just keep doing the work despite hearing “no,” again and again and again, from everyone who could open doors for you.

Better Book Clubs, for me, is the work—by which I mean writing, one of the things I do that makes me happiest. I’m glad my writing has brought me here to you. I’m gonna blow out a birthday candle and get to work on another year!

Photo by Isabella Fischer on Unsplash