My book comes out Tuesday and I’m making plans to herald its arrival—as a friend said, you only launch your first book once. So we’re planning a dinner, a party, a bookstore event or two… but the most significant thing I’ve done to celebrate is to turn in Book Two to my publisher.
The Coat Check Girl was not intended to have a sequel. Proof of this is on my hard drive in the form of several unrelated projects in various states of completion, projects I began after finishing my novel. I thought I was done with Josie and Bistrot and I moved on to different worlds—a comedic noir about a travel agent who falls for the wrong, murderous woman, a coming-of-age about a mother-daughter escape to Paris, a cross-country road trip during which a precocious child hints at a past life. But after being on submission for a while and reaching out to publishers large and small, my agent found a wonderful home for my book with Roan and Weatherford’s Radiance imprint. When she called to tell me they were interested she mentioned there was one caveat—they want multiples (i.e. sequels and sequels to sequels). I said “Absolutely, no problem, I can do that!” We brainstormed rough ideas for books two and three and she asked how quickly I could have the next one ready. “Whenever they want,” I said. “Within a year?” “No problem.”
Problem.
I worked on The Coat Check Girl over the course of many, many years, and can’t begin to count how many drafts of chapters, sections, and the entire book I wrote. There were a lot of growing pains. I killed darlings, renamed characters, reconfigured relationships. There was a cat, briefly, and a funeral at a Ukrainian church in the East Village. There was a disgruntled former employee who hung out at the bar feeling sorry for himself. The once-secondary character who became my protagonist was far more cynical and less likable. I had time to experiment, meander, put the book down for several years, start other projects.
I love the final product and know it turned out as it did because of all this evolution. I had the luxury of time. Publication was not a foregone conclusion—far from it. In fact, I think I set out to write a book just to see if I could write a book, and I stopped and re-started many times before I decided to see if I could finish a book.
And then, against all odds, I got a contract for a three-book deal, and that “tell them what they want to hear” approach I took to subsequent deadlines became a daunting reality. The challenge was twofold – I had less than a year to complete it AND I had to pull a sequel from what I thought was a standalone story. I obviously kept to a far more stringent writing schedule, and within the many months I was working on my draft some major life events occurred, forcing me to continually adjust my plans and expectations.
Somehow, though, through a bit of hard work and a lot of divine intervention, I got my draft done. And when the panic abated, it was a pleasure to spend time in the world of The Coat Check Girl again—I’ve known these characters for so many years that they feel like part of me. I love them. Now I wait for my publisher to get back to me with edits and rewrites and for the first time in a year, I do not have the need to finish this draft hanging over my head. When I told a friend I had turned it in she said, “Now what are you going to do?” I’m going to start working on Book Three.