I Use A Terrible Word To Describe My Publisher
Brava, the publisher who prints my Alaskan series (parallel universe where the U.S. never bought Alaska and it became their own country with their own royal family), is re-releasing the books: The Royal Treatment, The Royal Mess, and The Royal Pain. And I have to explain how I feel about that with...a word I hate using.
Bittersweet. That's the word. Yuck. It's one of those words that always sound over-used the first time I hear it. Bittersweet: something sad and nice at the same time. But for whatever reason we don't say "it's sad and nice at the same time that Brava is re-releasing my Royals series", we say it's "bittersweet". Which is like saying something is "hotcold" or "angrythrilled" or "hornyfrigid" or "alivedead". At worst it sounds made up, and at best it sounds overdone.
The reason I'm stuck using a word I hate is because writing for Brava was all good at one time, and switching to another publisher was all good, and my books being available even after I wasn't writing for them was also all good, them being re-released yet again is all good. And one of the mongo-gigantic (see? now I'm making up words that sound overused right away) reasons these things are all good is because of the late, great Kate Duffy.
Kate was my editor at Brava and man oh man, did she spoil me. She thought everything I wrote and said was hilarious (who wouldn't love that?). When I turned in a manuscript, she dropped everything and read it the very same day, then called with 24 hours of finishing to tell me how much she loved it (who wouldn't love that?). Her ideas for covers were brilliant; her ideas for marketing were clever, and her editorial suggestions were inspired (she was the one who thought up naked Hide and Seek, to use just one example, and who wouldn't love that?). In 12 books over 5 years, she only once ever denied me. Only once did I hear the word No, about anything.
In the first draft of THE ROYAL TREATMMENT, two of the characters plan a honeymoon to the United States (they aren't American citizens). And the first place they were going to visit was Ground Zero in New York City. Not to gawk and point and wonder, but to pay their respects.
"No," Kate said, "they don't." Startled (was that a NO? oh no!), I asked her to elaborate. So she did: "They don't go see Ground Zero out of respect. They don't go for any reason. They can't. Because in that world, nothing completely fucking awful like 9/11 ever happened. In your Alaska, the towers are still standing. That world is SAFE."
I wanted to ask who she'd lost on 9/11. I didn't dare. And the thing about Kate was, she didn't ask. She didn't deprecate, she didn't explain. She just laid it out: you MUST delete that paragraph, end of discussion. And I was so startled she'd drawn a line in the sand that I nearly fell over myself agreeing to do it. (Frankly, my editors almost never draw lines like that so the mere fact that she did would have made me agree even if I didn't agree, if that makes sense).
Fast forward a few years, and Kate is now dead. She kicked cancer's ass for a while, showed it who was boss, and then got tired. Her death was as much sorrow as shock.
Now here come the Alaska books. New printing, new covers, new look. But no Kate. Almsot every day I'm getting bunches of cover flats or seeing release dates or fielding questions about Brava's other releases and none of it leads back to Kate and all of it leads back to Kate. Sure, I wrote the books. But as any author will tell you, that's just a part of the whole thing (and a lot of people don't think it's an especially big part, but there you go). And to be honest, they weren't books. I didn't (and don't) write books, I pull words together to make a pile of words. My books were hundreds of pages of a Word document, and Kate Duffy got them from my head to my computer to her office to her staff to book store shelves. They were only "my" books when she was finished doing her work.
I'm happy Brava is re-releasing the Royals. But I'm also sad because the re-release makes me think about Kate every day. My feelings are bittersweet. I miss her and there aren't two words smooshed together to describe that, there's just one: sad. Or sadsad, I guess, if we stick with the bittersweet formula.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that writers write (sure, duh, no brainer, right?) but what we don't do is morph our words into something a reader can pluck off the shelf at Barnes & Noble. For that, we need someone like Kate Duffy or Cindy Hwang or Monique Patterson. For that, we have to risk the bitter to enjoy the sweet. And I think that's okay; more, I think it's fair. I think sweet is sweeter if you know about the other side of the coin. Kate showed me the other side of the coin; I'm grateful to her for the bitter. And I thank her for the sweet.
Bittersweet. That's the word. Yuck. It's one of those words that always sound over-used the first time I hear it. Bittersweet: something sad and nice at the same time. But for whatever reason we don't say "it's sad and nice at the same time that Brava is re-releasing my Royals series", we say it's "bittersweet". Which is like saying something is "hotcold" or "angrythrilled" or "hornyfrigid" or "alivedead". At worst it sounds made up, and at best it sounds overdone.
The reason I'm stuck using a word I hate is because writing for Brava was all good at one time, and switching to another publisher was all good, and my books being available even after I wasn't writing for them was also all good, them being re-released yet again is all good. And one of the mongo-gigantic (see? now I'm making up words that sound overused right away) reasons these things are all good is because of the late, great Kate Duffy.
Kate was my editor at Brava and man oh man, did she spoil me. She thought everything I wrote and said was hilarious (who wouldn't love that?). When I turned in a manuscript, she dropped everything and read it the very same day, then called with 24 hours of finishing to tell me how much she loved it (who wouldn't love that?). Her ideas for covers were brilliant; her ideas for marketing were clever, and her editorial suggestions were inspired (she was the one who thought up naked Hide and Seek, to use just one example, and who wouldn't love that?). In 12 books over 5 years, she only once ever denied me. Only once did I hear the word No, about anything.
In the first draft of THE ROYAL TREATMMENT, two of the characters plan a honeymoon to the United States (they aren't American citizens). And the first place they were going to visit was Ground Zero in New York City. Not to gawk and point and wonder, but to pay their respects.
"No," Kate said, "they don't." Startled (was that a NO? oh no!), I asked her to elaborate. So she did: "They don't go see Ground Zero out of respect. They don't go for any reason. They can't. Because in that world, nothing completely fucking awful like 9/11 ever happened. In your Alaska, the towers are still standing. That world is SAFE."
I wanted to ask who she'd lost on 9/11. I didn't dare. And the thing about Kate was, she didn't ask. She didn't deprecate, she didn't explain. She just laid it out: you MUST delete that paragraph, end of discussion. And I was so startled she'd drawn a line in the sand that I nearly fell over myself agreeing to do it. (Frankly, my editors almost never draw lines like that so the mere fact that she did would have made me agree even if I didn't agree, if that makes sense).
Fast forward a few years, and Kate is now dead. She kicked cancer's ass for a while, showed it who was boss, and then got tired. Her death was as much sorrow as shock.
Now here come the Alaska books. New printing, new covers, new look. But no Kate. Almsot every day I'm getting bunches of cover flats or seeing release dates or fielding questions about Brava's other releases and none of it leads back to Kate and all of it leads back to Kate. Sure, I wrote the books. But as any author will tell you, that's just a part of the whole thing (and a lot of people don't think it's an especially big part, but there you go). And to be honest, they weren't books. I didn't (and don't) write books, I pull words together to make a pile of words. My books were hundreds of pages of a Word document, and Kate Duffy got them from my head to my computer to her office to her staff to book store shelves. They were only "my" books when she was finished doing her work.
I'm happy Brava is re-releasing the Royals. But I'm also sad because the re-release makes me think about Kate every day. My feelings are bittersweet. I miss her and there aren't two words smooshed together to describe that, there's just one: sad. Or sadsad, I guess, if we stick with the bittersweet formula.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that writers write (sure, duh, no brainer, right?) but what we don't do is morph our words into something a reader can pluck off the shelf at Barnes & Noble. For that, we need someone like Kate Duffy or Cindy Hwang or Monique Patterson. For that, we have to risk the bitter to enjoy the sweet. And I think that's okay; more, I think it's fair. I think sweet is sweeter if you know about the other side of the coin. Kate showed me the other side of the coin; I'm grateful to her for the bitter. And I thank her for the sweet.
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