What I Wish My Crystal Ball Had Shown Me

By Susan McBride

I do some of my best thinking when I’m walking (or in the shower or just waking up in the morning).  This past Sunday—my birthday—was no different.  As I chugged around the paths without my iPod to entertain me, I started pondering all the things I wish I would have known before they’d happened.  Not that I’d want a magical black dress like the one in Little Black Dress that gives its wearers glimpses of the future—both good and bad—but it would’ve made for a lot less worrying if I’d been able to foresee just a few bits and pieces.  Perhaps I could have handled myself better in uncomfortable situations and faced uncertainty with more confidence.

So without further ado, some of the things I wish I'd known back when:

1.  I would have appreciated hearing that, after I got out of college and wrote a book a year for ten years (all of them now stored in my linen closet!), someday I would indeed be writing full-time and have my fair share of deadlines.  It would’ve saved me the trouble of dealing with naysayers who, at the oddest times—like at my grandmother’s funeral—would approach and ask, “You’re not still writing, are you?  When are you going to hang it up?”  I could have just given them the finger and walked away.  Instead, I only gave them the finger in my head, which is not quite as satisfying.

2.  It would have been rather comforting to know that it never gets easier.  Writing novels, I mean.  Every one takes something out of me, and every one begs to be written a bit differently.  So as much as I learn from finishing (and revising) each manuscript, I always feel like a rookie, starting from scratch with each subsequent book.  

3.  Right out of college, when I thought going blond was a great idea, I would have appreciated a heads-up that no, it doesn’t look good on everyone, especially when your eyebrows are a really dark brown and your also dark-brown roots grow in really fast.  I could have saved a lot of money and time on hair appointments. Although that dark roots/light hair look is pretty popular these days. I should have hung in there for a few more decades!  (Not.)

4.  When I was in my 30s and still single, I would’ve loved to see a glimpse of my future and know that I would be 41-years-old before I met Ed, my husband. Then I would have been even more amused by the whispers and speculation of nosy family members, one of whom dared to inquire, “Are you a lesbian?  ‘Cause if you are, that’s okay.” I told him thank you for that vote of support, but I wasn’t a lesbian, just a happily single woman who hadn’t met a man worth my undying commitment.

5.  While it would not have made my life easier to be forewarned that I was going to have breast cancer at 42, I sure would’ve loved to have my crystal ball show me that, nearly five years after my diagnosis, I would be happy, healthy (knock on wood!), and still complaining about deadlines ad nauseum.

6.  For most of my life, I avoided veggies. To me, Snickers was a vegetable.  I was convinced that anything green was awful-tasting, akin to eating grass.  When I was 40, I went on a get-healthy kick, and I realized vegetables are AWESOME.  I am, in fact, a broccoli addict.  So if I’d put on that magical black dress at, say, twenty-five and had a vision of myself eating mostly vegetarian in another 15 years, I don’t figure I would have believed it.

Well, since I didn’t know any of this ahead of time, I had to bumble along and figure it out for myself.  Though I guess part of what makes life so interesting is muddling through and being able to look back with perfect hindsight! 

What things in your writing life or real life do you wish a crystal ball could have shown you?  Would it have changed anything?

Susan McBride is the author of Little Black Dress, a "Recommended Read" at Target Stores.  She has also written The Cougar Club, a Target "Bookmarked Breakout" title and one of MORE Magazine's "Books We're Buzzing About."  For more scoop, visit SusanMcBride.com or find her on Facebook.

Friends and Fate and a Little Black Dress

By Susan McBride

I can hardly believe Little Black Dress is out today (hooray!!!). I poured my heart and soul into this tale of two sisters, one daughter, and a magical black dress that changes all their lives forever, so I can't wait to hear what y'all think! It’s been a full year and a half since The Cougar Club was released. Long as that sounds, those months went by in a blink. So much happened in the interim, as you’ve heard me babble about before (cat nearly died, Mom diagnosed with breast cancer, pregnancy, miscarriage, skin cancer, you name it), that I can’t imagine having had any less time. I remember panicking last fall when my publisher wanted to push LBD out three months sooner with a pale pink cover that featured a headless woman in a very puffy black cocktail dress (ack!). Since the novel has nothing to do with puffy frocks and cocktail parties—and everything to do with love and fate and magic—I was less than thrilled. I also wasn’t sure I could get everything done (um, like, finish the book and do revisions) so quickly.

Thank goodness the pub date was pushed back and the cover was revamped. Strange how things work out sometimes. My mantra this year has been “I can only do what I can do;” and it seems like, the more I take a deep breath and let the things go that I can’t control, the more things turn out right. As I told my editor the other day, I have never been so happy with a book, inside and out. I even emailed Mumtaz Mustafa, the art director who designed Little Black Dress’s cover, sending him a love note saying how much I adored it. It was so important that a particular black dress not be depicted—part of the magic of Little Black Dress is having readers imagine for themselves what this special frock looks like—and Mumtaz got it just right.

My gratitude only grew along the road to LBD’s publication. One stop was Blurb Land, a destination that always makes me anxious (for which I'm always thankful that my agents and editor help out!). Still, I knew some of the authors on my wish list--fellow Girlfriends, as a matter of fact!—and so I gathered my courage, shot off emails (that I rewrote a dozen times), and hoped for the best. Turns out, I needn’t have worried myself silly. I was bowled over by the generosity of these wonderful women. Even if I said “thank you” a million times, it wouldn’t be enough. But I’ll say it again, “Thank you, ladies!" You are something special.

There were always friends along the way, giving me pep talks when I needed them and offering a hand. One crazy-busy pal made time in her schedule to plow through fifty pages at a time as I forged my way through revisions. She reassured me that I was on the right track and nudged me when I left a question unanswered. I normally don’t let anyone see revisions until I’m done, but I’m awfully glad I did this time around. So thanks to that good buddy as well!

When I had to turn my attention toward another manuscript this spring and summer, the marketing and publicity wizards were already at work, keeping in frequent touch, letting me know what was going on with LBD and what was to come, so that I feel downright calm (I know! It’s a strange sensation!). I'm more organized than in the past and less apt to expend energy on things that don’t need doing. What a nice change!

Perhaps there’s actually something to this whole “I can only do what I can do” idea. I’m going to hold onto that thought as Little Black Dress launches and try not to get stomach aches over what's going on and whether or not readers are enjoying it. I've got another manuscript to pen and some in-town and out-of-town gigs to do, which should keep me good and busy. And I'll remind myself to breathe and smile and be grateful for all the positive stuff. Like Bridget says in Little Black Dress, “Sometimes you just have to accept the magic that comes into your life and leave it be.” Amen to that, sister.

P.S. The pearl necklace giveaway continues through 5 p.m. Eastern Time today on http://www.facebook.com/SusanMcBrideBooks so don’t miss out! One grand prize winner receives a gorgeous strand of freshwater cultured pearls like the one on the cover of Little Black Dress. Five runners-up receive copies of the book. For more info and links to booksellers, please visit http://SusanMcBride.com.

In the Beginning Were the Words

By Susan McBride

Here I sit, desperate to talk about beginnings and wondering how to start, when I think, “Eureka! I’ll share the first graphs from some of my books, and we can see if I’ve gotten any better at it.” Okay, yes, I’m a glutton for punishment. But it might be amusing; and, with all the rain we’ve had in St. Louis lately—not to mention the tornadoes—I figured amusing would be very good indeed.

Just for clarity’s sake, I’ll italicize what I cut and paste from the books. The rest is just running commentary (aka, Susan Babble).

We’ll begin with BLUE BLOOD, the first of my Debutante Dropout Mysteries for Avon (circa 2004), where I needed to set the scene for murder:

Unlucky.

That’s what she was.

Molly O’Brien pulled her T-shirt down over her head, not bothering to tuck the hem into her jeans. She squinted at her watch, barely illuminated by the faint stream of light flowing in from the hall, and she groaned when she realized it was well past midnight. God, how she wished she’d weaseled out of helping Bud Hartman close the place! He was creepy enough in broad daylight. If that didn’t bite, now she also owed the babysitter overtime.

She grabbed her purse from its hook, slammed her locker, and turned around.

Bud stood in the doorway, watching.

In all five of those mysteries, I started with a Prologue, written in the third person, while the rest of each book is in first person (seen through the eyes of my protagonist, deb ball refugee Andrea Kendricks). It was great fun getting into the head of either the murder victim—before the murder, of course—or, in this case, the prime suspect, Andy’s old friend, Molly, now a single mom working at a Hooter’s type restaurant called Jugs. Fun fact: BLUE BLOOD was originally called STABBED IN THE BACK, which was changed to DEATH AND THE DEBUTANTE DROPOUT before it sold to Avon then ended up as BLUE BLOOD, which suits it perfectly.

Let’s move ahead a few years, to my first “Debs” book with Delacorte, released in 2008:

Laura Delacroix Bell grabbed the arm-rests of her seat in a death-grip as the Southwest Airlines jet touched down at Houston’s Hobby Airport, the wheels bumping hard against the tarmac before rolling to a stop. The kid behind her let out a wail loud enough to split her eardrums, and she gritted her teeth, willing the Flight from Hell to be over with ASAP.

Ten more minutes, and I’ll be off this cattle car, she told herself, thinking that nothing would feel better than stretching to her full 5’ 9” after her cramped ride from Austin. Besides her neck getting a major crick, she’d been stuck smack in front of the crying child who’d kicked the back of her seat for nearly an hour. As if that wasn’t torture enough, all they’d fed her were two tiny bags of peanuts.

Confession: I didn’t know what I was doing when I wrote the first draft of THE DEBS, my first-ever young adult novel. The story features four privileged prep school girls in Houston, and I wasn’t quite sure how to utilize all the different points of view. In the initial draft, I started with another character entirely, but I realized with the revision that the real starting point was Laura returning from "fat camp" where she’d been exiled for the summer by her teeny-tiny über-socialite mother. Laura probably has the juiciest external conflict in the book, and by the end of Chapter One, you can’t help but know she’s bought a ticket on a train wreck. So THE DEBS was definitely a case where my original beginning was not the beginning I ended up with.

Finally, let’s skip to this year and LITTLE BLACK DRESS, my second women’s fiction book (out August 23, 2011), which starts like this:

I never meant to resurrect the dress. I had intended for it to remain out of reach so there would be no more meddling. But I awoke before dawn with tears in my eyes after another strange dream about Anna, and I knew that I had to find it.

A bruised-looking sky bled between half-drawn curtains as I dragged myself from bed and padded down the hallway in my nightgown and bare feet. I switched on the attic light and grabbed the banister to climb, my knees creaking as sharply as the wood beneath my heels. At the top of the stairs, I paused to catch my breath and loudly sneezed.

I’d forgotten how dusty it was up there and how full of things forgotten: discarded furniture, a steamer trunk stuffed with my parents’ belongings, and more boxes than I could count. It could take me days to dig through all the detritus. I wished I had listened to Bridget about getting my life sorted out months ago so there would be far less clutter. The house was full of it now. Like so much of the past, I found it harder to face than to ignore.

This beginning was the beginning I had in my head from the start, going back to when I wrote the proposal a year ago. Once I knew what the book was about—two sisters, Evie and Anna, who could not be more different, and a magical black dress that shows each her fate and changes the course of their lives forever—I saw this scene of Evie at 71, alone in the Victorian house she’d grown up in, awakening at dawn after a recurring dream and realizing she had to unearth the dress from the attic. The story shifts between two points of view: that of Evie and that of her daughter, Toni. Evie’s voice is more immediate (first person) and Toni’s is third person limited. Somehow, the combination worked, with Evie kick-starting the tale and Toni capping it off.

It’s rare when I have that clarity from the get-go. Usually, I rewrite my beginnings over and over again as I go along. Sometimes as I figure out the pieces of the puzzle—and understand better all the nuances of each character—I see a different starting point. What I’ve learned through the years is to trust my gut and to just get the freaking first draft done. I always feel like, once I know the whole story from start to finish, the fun truly begins (aka, revisions!). But—as you’ve heard me say before—the first draft is pretty much verbal vomit.

Hopefully, I’ll start vomiting copious words very soon since I’ve got a new book to write (like, now). I wonder if Office Depot sells writers’ barf bags?

P.S. As you read this, I am trying hard to keep my nose to the grindstone, sweating over the beginning of a young adult thriller, DEAD ADDRESS, for Random House/Delacorte. No doubt, I will mess with said beginning endlessly before this draft is done. Feel free to drop by my web site any time or find me on Facebook!

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

by Susan McBride

As of 2011, I've reached 12 years as a published author, and I must say my career has been anything but boring. I started out writing mystery series before trying my hand at a non-mystery young adult series. Then I was offered the chance to do a women’s fiction stand-alone, THE COUGAR CLUB, which came out last year. I loved the freedom of writing a novel that wasn’t meant to lead into a second book and then a third. It was great knowing I could leave my three forty-five-year-old “Cougars” and move on once I’d gotten them to a pretty happy place (or at least a better place than they were in when the book started). It’s funny, though, how many people thought it was the start of a series with more to come. I’m not sure if my history as a series writer caused them to assume that or if it was the ending, which leaves a few unanswered questions, mostly in the vein of, “Will she or won’t she?”

I have trouble wrapping up a story so completely that there's no room to wonder. Isn’t that what makes real life so interesting: not knowing what each day will bring? For me, it’s the same with my novels. I know the characters will live and grow beyond the time I spend with them…unless I decide to blow them all up, which I’ve yet to do (but I have been tempted).

After COUGAR, I knew I wanted to write another women’s fic book, and I had an idea about a grown-up SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS (well, sort of). It involved a black dress that was worn by three different women, and it fit them all, no matter that they were different sizes. And it had an indelible impact on all of their lives. Although when I presented my first one-page synopsis to my agents, they were hardly bowled over. “Um, this isn’t it,” I remember them saying. “So take that premise and try again.”

I’m not sure what happened—or how—but it was likely in the shower or on the treadmill (two of my best idea places) when I realized what LITTLE BLACK DRESS was really about: two sisters from a generation back and the magical black dress one of them buys at a vintage shop the day before her wedding. She wears it that night and has a vision of her future that doesn’t involve the man she’s about to marry. She disappears to avoid marrying the wrong guy and she doesn’t come back for years, leaving her sister behind to pick up the pieces…and to discover for herself the secret of the little black dress (which she does, in spades).

When I sent this revised synopsis back to my agents, they were excited. “Yes, this is it! More please!” they said, and so I keep thinking and dreaming and writing. Pretty soon, I had a three page summary and 50 sample pages with the POV alternating between Evie, the “responsible” sister who must deal with Anna—her younger sibling—running off and leaving her behind, and Toni, Evie’s daughter, who’s made a life for herself in St. Louis but must return to her small Missouri town when her mom has a stroke. In the process of being home again, Toni has to confront her own past and all the skeletons buried in the closets of the old Victorian. What Toni discovers about Evie and Anna--and herself--is beyond surprising.

I had no idea when I embarked upon this multigenerational tale that I would feel such an emotional pull. Normally, when I write, I’m in such a zone that I don’t feel anything but eager. I don’t cry when my characters cry. I don’t laugh when they laugh. Okay, most of the time I don’t. But with LITTLE BLACK DRESS, I found myself gut-wrenched by the emotional scenes; maybe because so much was going on in my life in 2010 as I wrote it, like putting on a breast cancer fundraiser (I’m a survivor) and having my mom show up on my doorstep a week before the event saying, “I have breast cancer.” My reaction, "You're kidding, right?" She’s doing GREAT, thank heavens, as it was caught very early but it freaked me out just the same.

As if that wasn't enough, one of our cats got deathly ill and nearly died. She spent two days in the emergency vet hospital and underwent tons of tests and a blood transfusion then required twice a day meds and weekly vet visits for two and a half months. Since our three cats are like our children, Ed and I lived on pins and needles until we knew Blue would be okay.

It’s no wonder I felt drained while working on LBD, and I recall feeling particular angst while writing a scene with Evie suffering a miscarriage. I had never been pregnant so I could only imagine the devastation at losing a baby and the toll it takes on someone mentally and physically. I was weeping as I got through it. It was only after I turned the manuscript in before Thanksgiving that I found out I was about four weeks pregnant. Oh, boy, that explained a lot! Ed and I were over the moon.

Unfortunately, I miscarried on New Year’s weekend (yeah, Happy New Year!). I had to revise the book—and tweak the miscarriage scene—barely three weeks after. It broke my heart a second time, but maybe in some way it helped me get through it. Writing is like that for me, it’s my personal therapy and maybe why my characters endure so much; because I can work through my own heartache through them.

It's strange when life imitates art when it's usually art imitating life. Although I tell myself that everything I do is purely made up, I realize pieces of me seep in, no matter how hard I try to keep myself out of it. Still, all of our experiences shape us in various ways, hopefully making us more empathetic people and better writers, too. Every hardship or devastation or brilliantly happy moment lends itself to stronger characters and a more believable story. It makes me feel good to think so anyway!

Susan McBride is the author of Little Black Dress coming out as a William Morrow trade paperback in September (yes, the date was just moved up from December!). She has also written The Cougar Club, a Target Bookmarked Breakout Title and a Midwest Connections Pick, as well as five Debutante Dropout Mysteries and several "Debs" young adult books. For more scoop, visit SusanMcBride.com.