What’s New and Next in 2024?
Whenever I speak to my grandmother, she asks when I'm going to write another novel.
I tell her I have written one, which I’m currently shopping around to literary agents. There's everything I can do as a writer, which is the drafting and revision of the manuscript and the building of my author platform. Then, if I want to continue on my trade publishing journey, which I do, there's the part where it's out of my hands, where a literary agent and then a publisher have to take a chance on my work.
My first two novels were published in the commercial romance space, where it’s common for authors to publish multiple novels a year. Though my readers haven’t asked me directly, like my grandmother has, I imagine they’re also wondering when I’m going to write another book.
You might also be wondering why I keep mentioning querying agents in these blog posts when I’ve been published already, so I suppose like Lucy Ricardo, I’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do. If you’re interested, here is a tour through the past few years as well as my thoughts and hopes on where 2024 and beyond will take me.
Our Story Thus Far
I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and by my late twenties, I was taking writing seriously. By 2021, I'd had a handful of short stories published. I'd attended incredible writing workshops, including Aspen Summer Words in Colorado and Mors Tua Vita Mea, halfway between Rome and Naples in Italy. I had a speculative thriller on the back burner, and out in the querying trenches, there was this quirky romcom I’d written (think: Helen Hoang and Gail Honeyman) that poked knowing fun at what I consider the sillier parts of the romance genre.
Because my romcom was quirky and self-deprecating, it didn't fit neatly into a box, and I think a lot of agents struggled to know what to do with it. There’s a definite element of mental blockage here, on my part, that I’d like to unpack at some point, under separate cover. For now, I’ll say that after querying for two years and getting four full manuscript requests, including a revise and resubmit, but no offers of representation, I learned that Hachette Book Group's digital-first Bookouture imprint, based in their London office, took unagented submissions.
I threw my hat in the ring, they picked it up, and I signed a contract for a two-book deal in February 2022.
My Time with Bookouture
For a year and a half, I was on a steady (and rather fast-paced!) linear trajectory, specifically focused on packaging me as a writer of romantic comedies. My first novel, My Big Fake Wedding, debuted in August 2022, hitting the Top 50 women’s fiction and Top 100 romantic comedy lists on Amazon and getting other accolades along the way. I wrote and then published my second novel, How to Keep a Husband for Ten Days, per the terms of our deal, in February 2023.
I owed Bookouture first right of refusal on my next book, so in true Jessica fashion, I developed a pitch deck with no fewer than four ideas for my next romantic comedy and sent it off. (Yes, Leslie Knope is my alter ego. Why do you ask?)
The call came from my editor in late July. She was kind and gracious as ever, but I was not offered another contract.
On the Non-Linearity of “Success” (Whatever That Means)
The fact that I wasn’t offered a new deal from Bookouture smarted at the time, but I’ve come to accept and appreciate the editing team’s decision. I write in more than one genre, and I take time to write well. As such, my audience wasn’t necessarily Bookouture’s audience, and if I'd had more commercial romances published, especially right away, the market would have pigeonholed me into one category.
To answer my grandmother’s question and yours, yes, I’m still tapping away, promoting the two books I’m proud to have put out (in less than a year!) even as I put fingers to keys on new projects and network where I can.
I have a genre-blending novel I’m super proud of that's out on submission with agents now and other upmarket (read: not mass market) ideas in development. Yes, one or two of them are even romances, but of the Gail Honeyman and Helen Hoang variety I was aiming for in the first place. In my darkest moments, I worry that the year and a half in which I was positioned as a highly commercial novelist may take a long time to claw and scrape away from. I worry that it may take years that see me observing my writer friends' careers take off to right the ship of my own.
But a successful literary career is not always linear.
Luminaries like Toni Morrison weren't published until their late thirties (or even later). Shirley Jackson wrote for Family Circle even as she wrote her horror and mystery novels like The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Take Catherine Baab-Muguira, who writes in Electric Lit about how she worked her butt off to earn out her advance in two years and found herself wondering, "What was this for?," when she did. Take all the brilliant writers I know and have edited for, who have written so many brilliant novels but don't have agents yet. Take the ones who have agents but are still waiting for a book deal.
Recently a historical novelist I know and whose work I adore said, "Writing is what makes you a writer, not a big publishing contract or a specific level of acclaim. Write because it’s meaningful to you, and you’ll always have satisfaction in what you do." This is the hardest thing to remember, but this is the best part of all of it.
Scrying the Future
In my home office, a laminated print hangs on the wall, a gift from another writing friend. "Do what you love, and do it often," it reads. And I do. I write even when I'm told I'm not getting another contract. I write when the rejection letters come in—and the acceptances. I would write if no other living soul ever read my words again. While I desperately hope that won't be the case, it's true. And it's enough to keep me going.
It may take a while before readers get to preorder another novel from me, and it may be a zigzag of a climb, but, by gum, I promise I'm working on it. —JH
