2023 has been a roller coaster year for me. It started terribly, but amazing things happened to me eventually, for both my personal life and my author journey.
• January-June •
Cats only have one life 🐱
In January, during a routine vet exam, our vet noticed for the first time that my cat Haiku had a heart murmur. After further tests (x-rays, ultrasounds, blood tests, I’m glad I have a pet insurance because all that was expensive), the vet confirmed he has a cardiomyopathy. The good? It’s mild and doesn’t require treatment yet. The bad? It will never get better and we can only keep monitoring his heart to track the disease’s progress, and decide when it’s time to start him on medication.
Grief comes and goes 👥
In February, another tragic event happened to me and my family. My father, who lived in France and had been dealing with two chronic diseases, suffered a stroke, ended up in the hospital and died a few days later. I jumped on a plane when the medical team told us it was the end, and spent the next two weeks arranging my father’s funerals with my siblings.
Mental health is health ⚕️
In April, after I flew my father’s cat Maui to California to come live with us, my anxiety got worse for a variety of reasons, and by May I was dealing with a full-blown depression. Thankfully my spouse pushed me to seek medical help, which I did. After a few trials and errors, in June I found a medication that my body tolerated and that finally brought me relief, alleviating my ongoing anxiety for good and my depression after a few weeks on treatment. By September I was already in recovery. Thank you therapy and citalopram.
I still managed to write a book… 📗
Despite dealing with a lot of negative things in my life during the first half of 2023, I still found the strength to work on a story project I had been thinking about for a long time: The Color of Time, a sci-fi retelling of Charles Perrault’s Donkey Skin.
I wrote this story between January and April. I still don’t know how I did it, but in March I picked up the manuscript where I had left it mid-February when my father passed away, and finished it. My spouse read it, and immediately said: submit it. For the first time, he had no major feedback that would require me to do some revisions. He was unsure about the second person POV, but that was it.
• July-December •
…and got a book deal ✌️
I sent this story (a 40k-word manuscript) to a few independent presses and magazines, with no expectations. In August, I saw a call for submissions by Moonstruck Books, a new independent press based in Portland. I researched them a little bit to know who they were and what they envisioned for the press, and satisfied with what I had found, I submitted my manuscript. I got a personalized response the same day by their editor FZ Boda to acknowledge reception of the manuscript, saying they looked forward to reading it, and a few days later, a request for a phone call. When FZ said they had read the story and enjoyed it, liked my writing and my creativity, and wanted to publish it, I thought I was going to cry.
So in August, I signed my first book deal.
I wish I would have tips to share with writers who aspire to be represented by an agent and/or published by a traditional publisher (big or small), but I don’t have any secret. No magic recipe or steps to follow to get your book deal or agent offer. Honestly, forget everything you read from people who give you advice, tell you to revise your query letter to death, to revise your opening chapter to death, to do XYZ if you don’t get X% of full requests. I’m not saying you can’t do it if you want (I did revise query letters, opening chapters, etc.), but not doing it is not why you’re not getting requests or offers.
The reason you are not getting requests or offers (if we assume your manuscript and query/pitch are good/professional enough) is because you haven’t sent the right manuscript to the right person at the right time. So keep writing, keep working, keep submitting, because you never know what’s going to work or not. You may never get a deal or an offer (let’s be honest, most writers don’t), or you may get one. What’s 100% sure if that you WON’T get one if you don’t try. So keep trying as long as you’d like, as long as you have the energy and will to write and submit. Write for yourself, because you love writing, then wish good luck to your manuscripts when you send them out there into the publishing word, and work on something new.
…and bought a house! 🏡
The same day that I signed this book deal, I also bought a house. My spouse and I had been visiting houses for several weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area where we live, expecting months and months of house hunting as it is common here for houses to sell at ridiculous prices in bidding wars.
We visited a wonderful house in San Jose that we both fell in love with instantly. It was so big and beautiful that we believed it was out of our league. We still made an offer (our first), thinking that we had nothing to lose, and at least we would learn how this step of the buying process works. To our surprise, we were the only offer at the time, and after a bit of negotiation with the sellers, they accepted it. The same day I signed my book deal. This was August 24, a day I will remember for a long time!
…and wrote two more stories ✍️
⏳ In September, I saw a funny post on Bluesky that prompted authors to use their phone’s auto-suggest feature to get their next book’s title. Mine suggested “The Sopranos and the first time machine.” A few weeks later, I had finished a sci-fi thriller short story named Moon Dust that features a family of mobsters, a time machine, drugs, pathogens, and *a lot* of violence. I’ve sent it to a few magazines and anthology calls. I don’t know if I will ever sell it, but it was fun to write.
🐺 In November, I had a story idea for another fairy tale retelling, of Little Red Riding Hood. This retelling is not sci-fi, but rather a more classic fantasy/fairy tale. As I am writing this article, I just finished the first draft, a 20k-word novella, and hope to have a polished manuscript ready for submission in the next few weeks. The story is titled Daughters of the Blue Moon and is inspired by both Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm’s versions. It explores more in depth the symbolism of the original tale (sexuality, periods, womanhood, rape) and features a sapphic twist and more fantasy elements. The main theme is retaking ownership of one’s life and fate.
To conclude this section of the article, here is my favorite part of Perrault’s version, the moral:
On voit ici que de jeunes enfants,
Surtout de jeunes filles
Belles, bien faites, et gentilles,
Font très mal d’écouter toute sorte de gens,
Et que ce n’est pas chose étrange,
S’il en est tant que le Loup mange.
Je dis le Loup, car tous les loups
Ne sont pas de la même sorte ;
Il en est d’une humeur accorte,
Sans bruit, sans fiel et sans courroux,
Qui privés, complaisants et doux,
Suivent les jeunes demoiselles
Jusque dans les maisons, jusque dans les ruelles;
Mais hélas ! qui ne sait que ces loups doucereux,
De tous les loups sont les plus dangereux.
Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say “wolf,” but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.
• 2024 •
- During the first half of the year, I plan to draft a novel which working title is Of Blood and Bones. It will be a horrific, sapphic, historical romantasy set in France. I have been hesitating between two periods for the setting (late nineteen century or post-WWII) and was recently leaning toward post-WWII, but after visiting the Winchester Mystery House a second time just a few days ago, I am considering the late nineteenth century/early twentieth again. I have already drafted a high-level outline of the story and identified some key elements of the worldbuilding, but still have a lot to do. As a typical plantser (half-way between plotter and pantser), I plan enough ahead to know where I am going, but come up with a lot of elements as I write the story. I expect this novel to be longer than my recent manuscripts, perhaps up to 100k words. We will see how it comes together as I write it.
- Then, in the second half of the year, I will begin the first big edit of The Color of Time as agreed with my editor. We have a lot to do to make this manuscript shine, but I’m in very good hands at Moonstruck Books and I have no doubt the final manuscript will be amazing.
- When not drafting Of Blood and Bones or revising The Color of Time, I will keep sending my other stories to submission calls, and perhaps work on other short stories or novelettes. Who knows! I like to plan but also don’t mind changing course in case I get a new story idea that cannot wait, or need to take a well-deserved break from writing.
If you are still here, thanks for reading and Happy New Year! If you are an author, what are your plans for 2024, big or small? If you are a reader, what upcoming books are you excited for? I know I can’t wait to read Charlie N. Holmberg sci-fantasy Still the Sun, and Sue Burke’s third installment in the Semiosis series, Usurpation. And of course, though I have read the ARC already, I can’t wait to hold between my hands Claire Rudy Foster’s The Rain Artist, the first book that will be published by Moonstruck Books and a brilliant novel. You can pre-order it here.
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