On Wednesday night, the Teachers and Writers Collaborative hosted a publication party for my book. It was a lovely evening (for me, anyway) that I will long savor, and thanks to all who came out.
It also turned out to be an opportunity to publicly announce what I will echo here: I've reached an agreement with Doubleday to publish my work-in-progress second novel. I've got a ways to go before I even have a first draft of the book, and I'm not going to hazard a guess as to when it will be completely finished, let alone published, but I'm thrilled that it has found a home, and especially thrilled to be staying with my editor, Gerry Howard, and everyone else at Doubleday. Its a great team and a great publishing house.
The scary truth these days is that getting one book of fiction published is no guarantee of getting another published, as sales figures, rather than merit, often play a central role. (An example of how hard it can be -- though one with a happy ending -- can be found in this article about how Sam Lipsyte's acclaimed second novel, Home Land, almost went unpublished in the U.S.) Making the leap from published author to author with an established writing career is probably about as difficult as making the initial leap from unpublished to published. (My apologies to any aspiring author reading this whose day I just ruined, but it's always good to know what you're getting into...) I'm still a very long way from making that second leap, but having a home for the work-in-progress is a nice step in the right direction.
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