Guest Post: Amy Sue Nathan, author of THE GLASS WIVES By Brenda Janowitz

We’ve been having so much fun taking those old unpublished novels out from under the bed that we decided to ask some of our friends to do the same! Today, I’m thrilled because we’ve got Amy Sue Nathan, whose debut novel, THE GLASS WIVES, is being published by St. Martin’s in 2013.  She’s also the force behind the popular blog, Women’s Fiction Writers.  She’s got an excerpt from her unpublished novel, PICKING DAISY, which I think you’ll love.  The story behind it is pretty interesting in its own right, too!  But, enough of what I think.  I’ll let Amy take it from here…

Picking On Trunk Novels

by Amy Sue Nathan

For me, the best part of an having a novel I’ve tucked under the bed, is that I can tear it to bits, bully, and shove away again without feeling guilty.  There’s a certain amount of power I have over it because no one else is going to read it. The expectations for that book have been tempered. I have nothing to lose.  It’s kind of…freeing.

Somewhere between finishing my upcoming novel The Glass Wives and it selling, I wrote a novel called Picking Daisy. I got the idea for the novel when salespeople and wanderers kept showing up at my front door.  I thought: what would happen if some long-lost relative showed up one day?  We never really know who’s knocking, do we?  And what if there was someone who knew something about me even I didn’t know? Would I let them in? Shoo them away?  I loved the characters in this story: a dark and artist teenager, an eccentric aunt, a workaholic father, and insecure step-mother.  I loved playing with points of view. I loved writing a family who celebrates Christmas -- since I’m Jewish and never have. I only went two rounds of revisions on this book before realizing, with the help of my agent, that it just wasn’t what it needed to be.  The story was scattered and the way to corral it, was to change the focus, and the main characters.  That would change the story so exponentially that I wasn’t interested in doing it. I wanted to tell Daisy’s story and it just wasn’t her time, my time, our time. 

Still, Daisy holds a special place in my writing heart.  She’s a girl who has been kept from her father her entire life and all she wants is to be part of his family – and she’s willing to do just about anything to get it. Even dye the pink out of her hair.

Below is the opening to Picking Daisy. I hope there’s a smidgen of room in your heart for her as well.

PICKING DAISY

by Amy Sue Nathan

For eighteen years and three months Daisy thought of her father as a test tube specimen. Now, she was standing at his front door. 

It was freezing outside, probably way below zero.  She didn’t lick her dry lips, afraid they’d freeze together and she wouldn’t be able to talk.  With fist raised and drawn, Daisy was ready to knock then the door clicked and opened about eight inches. Daisy saw a petite woman in a pink T-shirt with a white Nike swish and fitted black Lycra shorts.  She looked like Martha Stewart, only sweatier. 

“I’d like to speak with Elliot Evans,” Daisy said.  She smiled, opened her black-lined eyes wide and then chided herself for trying to look cute, like a kitten someone would want to bring in from the cold and keep for her own.

“He’s not here. Can I help you with something?” The woman opened the wooden door wide but stood behind the glass storm door holding the handle.  Daisy didn’t know if Martha was unlocking it or keeping it closed. 

“I’d like to meet him,” Daisy said.  “I’m his daughter.” No need pretending she was there to sell cookies.

“Very funny, young lady. We don’t have a daughter. I should know. I’m Maggie Evans, his wife.” 

“Then you are my step-mother. Nice to meet you.”  Daisy held out an invisible skirt and curtsied.

Step-Martha smiled with a closed mouth, looked at the floor and stepped back, pushing the door closed. 

Daisy held up her right hand. She spoke without taking a breath. “My name is Daisy. My mother is Olivia. Olivia Cooper.”  

Maggie opened the door.  Her eyes shot up and she stared at Daisy.  She turned away, wrapped her arms around herself and faced Daisy again. “How do you know about Olivia?”  

“She’s my mother.” Was Maggie Evans deaf?

“Elliot hasn’t seen Olivia in over twenty years.”

“According to my mom, and when she says he moved out, it’s nineteen years, not twenty.”

Maggie rolled her eyes like a teenager. “Yes,” Maggie said. “And they divorced before they had any children.”

“That’s true, but my birthday is August twenty-second.  My mother was eight weeks pregnant the February he left.  What’s so hard to believe? He was her husband.” 

Daisy knew all of it was hard to believe.  She’d been saying it aloud for seven days, since her mother’s cell phone confession.  Daisy was not a Donor Conceived Offspring. Her mother had not been artificially inseminated because she’d always wanted a child but never wanted to marry.  Her mother had been married to her father for five years when Daisy was conceived the old-fashioned way. During break-up sex.  As if the reconfigured story of her parentage wasn’t bad enough – Daisy could no longer boast being miracle of modern technology.  She could no longer daydream about the comprehensive daddy database from which her blue eyes, black-brown hair, long legs, athleticism, temperament and medical history were chosen. She was nothing more than an unfortunate accident. And a very big secret.

“Look, can I come in?” Daisy asked. “It’s fucking cold out here.”  So much for the cute kitten effect.

“Watch your language, young lady.”

Daisy shoved her bare hands into the pockets of her not-meant-for-Pennsylvania-in-winter fleece jacket.  “I‘ll take a DNA test,” Daisy said again. “If he wants proof.”

“If you don’t go away I’m going to call the police.” Maggie's short, well-manicured fingernail tapped a rapid beat on the “No Solicitors Invited” sticker on the sidelight.  The tapping matched Daisy’s pulse both in tempo and tone. “This means you can’t knock on my door unless I give you permission,” Maggie added through a clenched jaw.

“I’m not trying to sell you something.  I’m your husband’s daughter.”  The final word caught in her throat and Daisy swallowed the last syllable. She shivered and turned away, blinked and tipped back her head to retract the tears and to sort through her thoughts. She looked at the brick driveway and the cobblestone path that had been cleared of snow, and then looked up at the two story French-style house. Chateau.  Mansion.  “I don’t want any of this,” she said, facing Maggie while removing her hands from her pockets. She didn’t. She wanted a family. “I just want to meet my father. He didn’t even know my mother was pregnant. God, I just want him to know he has a daughter.”

This was not going as planned.  The imagined tears of her still-imaginary father replaced by the scowl and disbelief of his wife.

“Elliot doesn’t have a daughter,” Maggie said.

Daisy crossed her arms, lodged her hands under her armpits for warmth and effect, and poked her left eyebrow so high it hid beneath her pink-streaked bangs. 

“He does now.”  

Daisy watched the door close and stared at the engraved brass knocker she hadn’t noticed earlier.  Evans. Daisy hadn’t heard that name until the week before. An internal twist, an unfamiliar blend of cramps and exhilaration. Her birthright was on the inside, not outside standing on the oversized unwelcome mat.  She turned and ran to the idling taxi in the driveway.  Good thing she hadn’t paid the driver and told him to come back later.  Daisy climbed into the back seat.  She wiggled her toes, stretched her fingers and began to thaw.  She looked at the drawn curtains but knew step-Maggie was watching her.

The cab backed out of the driveway.  Unaccustomed to the crunchy sound of snow dust beneath the tires, Daisy listened with intention and heard every crackle, crunch and squash.  When the taxi sat parallel to the house the driver shifted the car into park. Daisy fumbled in her pocket.  Gum. She held out a stick of Juicy Fruit to the driver.  He turned and accepted it, smiling.

“You okay, miss?”

“Not really,” Daisy said.

“You’re prettier than her,” he said. “That woman at the door.”

Daisy sniffed and smiled. “Thank you.” 

“We can just stay here if you like.”

“No, that’s okay.  I’m ready to go.”

Daisy watched the too-still curtains of her father’s house and beauty-pageant-waved as they drove off. 

New and old money mansions rose out of the snow like castles on clouds. Remnants of well-manicured, gardener-tended bushes draped icicles like pearls on a string around a graceful neckline.  Who knew it snowed in November?

Daisy pictured the house she grew up in tucked into the current landscape.  She smiled.  That house was pale and bold with sharp lines like her mother and sparse like their time together.  It was a rectangle that sat over a cliff and overlooked the beach -- nothing like the brick and mortar monstrosities with turrets, bay windows and chandeliers overlooking the road and more houses.  Daisy’s lifelong backyard was the beach, her view, the horizon.  People flocked to La Jolla to escape the cold and the heat. Daisy had fled La Jolla the day after high school for a summer French immersion program in Paris.  She met her mother at Reed College for move-in day at the end of August.  She had planned to spend Thanksgiving with her mom and favorite aunt, but when Daisy arrived at the Portland airport, she booked the redeye to Philadelphia instead.

She had to admit, aside from the front door fiasco, she liked Gladwyne, Pennsylvania.  It was a touch gaudy and a tad pretentious, but the premature twinkle lights were strewn with good intentions.

Her mother would have disliked it for the same reasons.

Daisy paced her hotel room, no bigger than an inside cruise ship cabin.  She dumped her hobo bag contents on the bed, hoping for an escaped candy bar at the bottom, or her uneaten honey-roasted airplane-peanuts, but all she found was chewed gum balled and half wrapped in paper. Gross.  She took two steps to the bathroom, threw the gum in the trashcan under the sink.  She unwrapped the small cake of soap on the ledge and washed the stickiness she knew would never be all-the-way gone. Daisy pictured the vending machine down the hall, next to the ice machine.  Her stomach growled. Five-star hotels had five-star snacks.  Hotels like this had vending machines.  The best vending machines.  But the snack would wait. She dug for her case of graphites, and drew.

First short strokes, then longer ones, straight and curved and then round, creating her own rendition of step-Martha.  Just a rough image of a woman barricading a door.  Daisy could finish it later, adding the subtle lines around the eyes, revealing the slight twitch in the lip, the sweat on the décolleté.  Daisy guffawed. If she had been speaking to her mother she would have speed-dialed the office and joked about how French language had permeated her thoughts – just like Olivia had wanted.  But she wasn’t speaking to her mother.  Daisy focused on the page, the shadowy bricks, the mullet-shaped snow drifts, the tire tracks, the dark beyond the door, the abyss that was her father.

Daisy struck a pseudo-yoga pose and stretched her feet to her head.  Her back cracked and she got down to the business of piecing together the life of her brother, laying papers in front of in order of importance, not chronology.

She wanted to already know Chase Evans when she met him, like an older sister should. She was only two years older, but still.  Her personality was classic first born.  She had assumed it was because she had donor-siblings scattered across the U.S. or at least California. In reality it was because she had an unintentional sibling on the other coast.

Daisy laid down her head atop the papers.  They were cool and smooth.  She tucked her hands under the pillows above her head and closed her eyes. 

She wanted to make a good impression on her newfound family and was not off to a stellar start. The sarcasm would probably have to go, along with the cursing.  Her mother wasn’t sarcastic at all, it didn’t suit her.  Daisy figured it was just her nature but now she wondered if it was Elliot Evans’ nature as well.  What else about herself she would see in him when she met him? She grabbed her purse. To hell – to heck – with step-Martha. It was time to find out.

#

Amy Sue Nathan’s debut novel, THE GLASS WIVES, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2013.  Amy’s stories and essays have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times online, The Washington Post online, The Huffington Post, Chicago Parent, Grey Sparrow Journal, Rose and Thorn Journal, Scribblers On The Roof, The Verb, Hospital Drive Journal and The Stone Hobo.  In 2011 she launched Women’s Fiction Writers, a blog focusing on the authors, business and craft of traditionally published women’s fiction.  Amy is also a freelance fiction editor, and a reader for literary agents. She currently serves as secretary for the RWA-WF Chapter.

Amy lives near Chicago and is the mom of a son in college, a daughter in high school, and two rambunctious rescued dogs.

Find out more on Amy’s Website and Blog, or contact her via email (AmySueNathan@gmail.com or WomensFictionWriters@gmail.com), Twitter (@AmySueNathan), or Facebook.

Here’s a peek into The Glass Wives, coming from St. Martin’s Press in 2013:

When a tragic accident ends the life of Richard Glass, it upends the lives of ex-wife, Evie, second wife, Nicole, and their children. Still, there’s no love lost between the ex and the new widow. In fact, Evie sees a silver lining in the heartache—the chance to move forward without Nicole in their lives. But Evie wasn’t counting on her children’s bond with their baby brother, and she certainly wasn’t counting on Nicole hanging on to the threads of family, no matter how frayed. And anyway, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Evie and Nicole, both emotionally and fiscally spent by Richard’s death, agree to share living expenses—and Evie’s house. The arrangement, purely financial in Evie’s mind, has its benefits, such as a live-in babysitter. But it also exposes secrets and causes rifts between Evie and her closest friends. Then, when she suspects that Nicole is rearranging more than her kitchen, Evie must decide whom she can trust. More importantly, Evie must decide what makes a family. And if two Glass wives can be stronger than one.

My Doorstop Novel in Pictures

This is how I see every novel before I start it. It's a butterfly, about to take its first flight. Full of promise and beauty. So pretty! So delicate and fragile.

I know writers who wrote 10 or more novels before they sold. I know writers who wrote for 20 years before they sold. I know writers, including myself, who sold their first novel. I also know writers, including myself, who sold a few books and then didn't for a while and then did again. There are writers who hit a bestseller list with their first book and others who wrote twenty or more before they were selling a lot of books. I even know traditionally published authors who never hit a list of any kind until they self-published. There are writers who had to change their names to salvage their careers and THEN they had sales success. The progression of a career is as varied as the writers who have them.

One thing just about all writers have in common is their doorstop novel. The one that could not, cannot, or perhaps even should not, be brought to life.

I myself have such a novel. It would have been my third one. I was struggling as a writer at the time, primarily, I believe, because I was trying to plot and plan and structure my writing when, actually, that is not a process that works for me.

I worked on that novel, a historical romance set in the early Victorian era, for years. YEARS. I refused to give up on it. But my novel was like the peacock in this picture. Walking away. Leaving the inhospitable environment I had provided.

The working title was A Stranger's Heart and it's about a man who unexpectedly inherits a title. When he arrives at his estate, the housekeeper is a breathtakingly beautiful American woman with a dark, dark secret. Alas, most of the story is deadly dull except for a few parts that glow like that peacock when he's looking for chicks.

I think about the story every now and then, and I remember why the peacock is running away from home. The boring exposition. The parts where I refused to deviate from my 70 page outline even though there were passages that, in retrospect, were calling out to my subconscious: This way. Follow THIS thread. But I didn't. Because I believed at the time that I had to have outlines and plots and character charts.

I was wrong about what I needed to do. My novel, with its flashes of brilliance, was surrounded by a landscape sucked of its life. Like this picture. Just so we're clear, "dinner" here is my novel. The spider is the process that killed my writing. The web is, uh, the spider's home? There's a fearful symmetry there. Spiders are, of course, entitled to dine on what is natural for them. Just as writers need to feed their writing with a process that works for them.

If, as a writer, you try to force yourself to fit some mold that isn't you, you're going to end up like this sheep. Shorn of your dignity and just waiting for it all to be over.  Resigned even as you hope for inspiration from the outside. A Deus Ex Machina that will miraculously transform your book when the change needs to come from inside you.

Casting my doorstop novel as the sheep here, all the tools in the world can't fix you. You are not a butterfly or a peacock and as long as I am (was) broken as a writer, you, poor novel, are also broken. You are a sheep and I have written you into a position that is just damned undignified.

If I tried to write you now, I'd be better at it, but it would not be you, poor sheep. I would be something else entirely. But I thank you for the lesson.

I'll leave you with this image of the sunflower. Happy and cheerful. But also mysterious. Like writing.

A note about the pictures

 I took these pictures with my Nikon D-80 SLR.

The Swallowtail photo is, in fact, a butterfly that had just emerged from its chrysalis. I was holding that stick and the Swallowtail was staying still because it was waiting for its wings to dry. I got several excellent shots as a result.

A few years ago, peacocks moved into our neighborhood. This is Angus and I took this picture of him walking down the bottom half of our driveway because it was just so odd to see.

I'm ashamed to admit that when I took the shot of the garden spider, I didn't realize it was wrapping up dinner at the time. It was only when I was back at the computer looking at them that I saw the meal. These spiders are large but harmless by the way. But they eat bugs and that's good. I have several really great shots of some Black Widow spiders, too.

The sheep being sheared is Ian, a Welsh Mountain sheep. The man in blue jeans is the guy we call to shear our sheep and the neighbors. He has a PhD in Medieval history. The other is my father, now a retired physician.

I just like the sunflower picture and I love taking shots of them. I have yet to get the perfect one.

No Junk, Just a Little SLUSH in the Trunk

By Laura Spinella

Okay, so what I'm really wondering is how long until we Google through all the cute clipart that complements "trunk novels?"  Anyway... when our own Brenda Janowitz suggested the trunk novel theme, it seemed like a topic we could all relate to, sharing the would-be books and what became of them—kind of like spinsters in a crochet circle yapping on about the one that got away.  (I know, speak for myself)  Aside from a universal pitch that was sure to attract readers, writers and, who knows, maybe an editor’s eye, I own the unique experience of having resurrected a trunk novel for a very different reason.

            A few months ago, I was asked to start a writers’ critique group. Hmm, I ’m not a leader by nature. I’ve never aspired to teach the written word.  Writing is tough enough, never mind conveying the hard and fast rules of which the first rule is there are no hard and fast rules. I’ve heard I can be a tough critic.  My children hide essays better than the Easter Bunny hides eggs.  But after receiving emails from what seemed like an eager and genuinely interested group, I said yes. I said yes with the understanding that I would be an equal participant, no more, no less.  With a few more beginners than intermediate writers, I was perplexed as to what I might bring to the table. At the time, I was in the last round of revisions with my agent and THE IT FACTOR.  No offense, but I really wasn’t looking for outside input, not at this delicate juncture.  Then I thought of SLUSH. 
        This is the novel that was destined for greatness, my sure thing debut after BEAUTIFUL DISASTER had been permanently assigned to the trunk.  This alone goes to show what I know.  So off I went to the critique group, submitting chapters of SLUSH the way a kid might feed koi in a pond. At first, I was tentative—koi might as well be sharks if you’re six. Then there was my fascination at the hungry nibble.  I was amazed, watching my words roll around their mouths as if they actually tasted good. A few chapters in and the group was gathered by the edge, waiting for more.
Okay, maybe this book didn’t suck.

In truth, it never sucked.

Oh sure, it’s riddled with flaws.  They are flaws that this far more seasoned writer cringes at, scrambling to adjust unnecessary backstory and cliché character traits for an eager-eyed audience. And, so far, I’m having a good time doing it. SLUSH is more mainstream women’s fiction than romantic fiction, the genre that stamped my passport to publication. But the enthusiasm of these unexpected readers has refreshed my perspective, at least to the point of hunting up old emails, recalling exactly where that all changed. Agent number one rejected SLUSH outright. I mean, she probably broke a nail in her haste to dial a phone, telling me how much she hated the thing.  More than a decade younger than me—or my protagonist—she couldn't fathom why Lydia Sommers could not get past the drowning death of her three-year old son.  Go figure.  After that I was agent-less, (my choice) managing to get full reads for SLUSH from three major publishing houses. Each offered what I’d a call a positive rejection—complimentary but ultimately passing because… well, you fill in the blank. SLUSH was actually in the hands of publisher four when BEAUTIFUL DISASTER turned up from the trunk, almost by accident.  I’d succeeded, I was there. I could forget about a family saga that takes place in the seaside village of Snow Harbor, Maryland. I could move on from Lydia and Grady Sommers, the secrets that wash ashore decades later—a fateful twist of an ending that even I had forgotten I’d written!  I could forget all this except for a thoughtful group of women writers who have reminded me that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't.

            This is an excerpt from SLUSH, which was honestly not titled to irritate or mock the publishing masses. For the full chapter read, click here:

The Boathouse

Twenty-four Years Earlier

Snow Harbor, Maryland

          “Well, hello.  I was wondering if you changed your mind.” It was a whisper that stuck to the air like melted ribbon candy.  Audra Bauer stepped from the cabin of the dry-docked sailboat looking sweeter than anything Grady Sommers had ever tasted.

            “Changed my mind? I can’t believe you’re really here,” he said, grabbing onto the boat’s mast as if it was caught in rough seas rather than moored to a pit of dirt. “Sorry I’m late.  I had to take a shower.  I didn’t want to come out here smelling like bucket of varnish.  I was helping my dad with the finish on the tiller.”

            “Oh,” she said, looking past Grady’s shoulder, “should we be expecting him?”

            “Who, my dad?  No,” he laughed.  “They went to Mt. Pleasant for the evening.  That’s why I helped.  I wanted to make sure he got it done.  He won’t have any reason to come out here.  It’s the last piece before he puts her back out to sea.”

            Audra took a few steps closer, glancing around the dim cavern of the boathouse.  “I see.  That was clever thinking, Grady.”

            “I wanted to make sure we were alone.”  He guessed she was as nervous as him, watching her tuck a length of blonde hair behind her ear.  He knew it was a habit, having spent much of his senior year observing Audra Bauer.  She was unattainable. 

 Audra and her father moved to Snow Harbor the summer before.  There was no mention of a Mrs. Bauer, except to say that there wasn’t one, Walter Bauer filling a need as Snow Harbor’s only lawyer.  They were from Philadelphia, which according to Grady’s father made them city people and complicated.  According to Grady, it only added to Audra’s allure. Two gas lanterns cast a glow around her, moonlight threading through the cracks of the barn-like building where Emil Sommers dry-docked broken boats.  On the raw wood ceiling craggy shadows jumped about like little devils on an errand. And knowing what they’d come there to do, the shadows made Grady feel even edgier: looming hell, Audra Bauer, and his father’s voice booming in the back of his head.  He was amazed she didn’t hear it.  Use good judgment and you’ll be fine, son.

            Audra’s voice stifled any lecture.  “Did you bring it?”

            “Yeah, here,” he said, pulling a paper bag from the shadow of his jacket.  “It’s the kind you wanted, right?  Extra-dry.” He smiled, wanting very much to please her. It was part of his image to deliver things, like liquor, as effortlessly as he did the winning touchdown.  It went with being popular.  Just like handsome went with the fact that he’d done it with half the girls in the senior class.  There were girls he’d gone all the way with while parents’ slept in the next room, and ones he’d jaded under the bleachers after a big game.  He’d heard it all, stupefied by his own prowess.  The stories were stunning and empowering.  The trouble was, not a single one was true.  
         Click here to continue... 


 Laura Spinella is the author of BEAUTIFUL DISASTER, a 2012 RITA finalist for Best First Book. The novel is also the winner of the NJRWA Golden Leaf and Desert Rose RWA Golden Quill awards for Best First Book, as well as a finalist in the Wisconsin Write Touch Readers' Award. Visit her at lauraspinella.net 

         

The Story of Z

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

I thought about titling this post "The Junk from My Trunk," but that seemed to be too much like putting a sign on my own bottom saying "Kick Me", so.

Like all writers in my acquaintance, I have trunk novels. In my case, some of those are things that pre-date my first publishing deal while others came after. Z: A Novel is one of the latter and here's the story behind it.

I originally came up with the idea in March 2004. My debut novel had come out the previous July, my second was due out that coming July, and I needed something to play with. The Great Gatsby being my favorite novel by a dead author, the thought naturally occurred to me to do my own version. What I came up with was a story about a female writer named Nix Carter (the Nick Carraway character) who returns home to Danbury, CT, after years out in L.A. in order to care for her ailing father. Having lunch while hungover at the mall one day, she's in the company of Tim amd Dahlia Bucket (the Tom and Daisy Buchanan characters), when she sees a man dressed all in black, including a cape. He turns out to be a window washer who goes by the name Zorro. (That's right, in my version, Jay Gatsby is a window washer who may or may not really be Zorro, the hero of legend.)

When I say the book just flew out of me, I'm not exaggerating. In 19 days, I had completed the first draft. It wasn't a long book, being just shy of 67K words, but still, I'd never written something so easily in my life or that made me so happy. It had comedy, drama, romance, adventure, swordplay; it even said something about the tragically xenophobic world we sometimes find ourselves in.

Even though I was happy with it, I knew it wasn't a fit for Red Dress Ink, the publisher I still had three more books contracted to, so I held onto it, content to wait.

A year later, when I switched from Agent 4 to Agent 5, Agent 5 fell in love with Z. But one thing and another happened and Agent 5 never submitted that book anywhere; Agent 5 never submitted any of my books anywhere.

Then came Agent 6, with whom I signed in June 2005. Agent 6 and I got busy selling a bunch of things together - we've actually sold 18 books to publishers to date - and Z was not in the initial mix. By the time we did start submitting it, publishers didn't want to publish anything that could conceivably be labeled Chick Lit; and given that my five comedic novels for adults had been published by Red Dress Ink, any comedy I write - even The Bro-Magnet, which is told entirely in the first-person POV of a man - runs the risk of getting labeled that way. So there were a lot of positive things said about Z by various editors, but no sale.

This March, a full eight years after I initially got the idea for Z, I put it up for sale as an ebook. I'd post the first few paragraphs here, but the truth is, if you follow the link I'll provide at the end of this long sentence, the link will take you to the book's page on Amazon where if you simply click on the image of the book cover, you can read the first 30+ pages of the book for free: link

If you like the sample, you can even buy the whole thing right now for 99 cents - a steal!

Thanks for listening. These are great, exciting times for writers like me. I still have books that are traditionally published and I'm grateful for that - I try to regularly practice gratitude in my life as a writer - but when I've written something that traditional publishing thinks is too quirky or too what-have-you, I can assume all the risk and reward myself.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of 24 published books for adults, teens and children. She is currently watching the Mets do really well, yet again, but there are still nearly four innings to go, so. You can read more about her life and work at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com or read her stupid tweets at @LaurenBaratzL on Twitter. She can't figure out what her own Facebook link is so don't ask.