Alchemy and Self Publishing
by Joanne Lewis
I wrote my first book when I was eight years old. It was a book about the weather and it was called, of course, The Book of Weather. I took construction paper and drew the sun and wind and clouds, wrote instructional blurbs about lightning and thunder and fastened the pages between two pieces of cardboard taken from my father’s new button-down work shirts. I covered the cardboard with green and yellow wallpaper that had bright and bubbly orange flowers dancing along it. The wallpaper had been left over from decorating our 1970’s Long Island kitchen.
I was pleased with my book but nothing made me prouder than when the librarian placed it in my elementary school library. I visited it every day. I don’t recall anyone checking out my book, or if it was given its own listing in the card catalogue or even a Dewey decimal number, but I didn’t care. There it was on the shelves. My book. I was a writer.
And a writer I was determined to be until the day came when practicality usurped my dreams. I graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and was considering what I would do next. I had to get a real job. My father’s words bounced around my head. You have to have a career so you know what you’re unemployed from. I went to law school.
I wrote my first novel when I was 24 years old and while a prosecutor working felony trials and sex crimes. I didn’t have an agent. A small press that has since gone out of business published the novel, a murder mystery called The Forbidden Room. While I did not sell many books, I was invited to speak on panels and did book signings. I got an agent. I was asked by an editor at Simon & Schuster to write a series featuring a young female prosecutor. She asked me to provide her with a synopsis of the first book and a general outline of books two and three. I was on my way.
Two months later, my agent presented my proposal to the editor who said, without further explanation, that she was no longer interested. Then my agent unexpectedly passed away. I was sad and wasn’t thinking about finding another agent when her associate called and said he was taking over her business and would not be keeping me as a client.
Opportunities continued to arise, at least for a short time. Another small press wanted to publish a book of mine, however things fell apart during the editing stage and the novel was ne
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