I began this newsletter in January with the intention of writing a post per week for a year, a countdown to my debut in January 2025. I had 52ish posts to document the highs and lows of my wild ride to publication. But last Monday, I got an email from my editor that… changed things.
My pub date was pushed.
Tell Them You Lied is no longer coming out in January 2025—but in May 2025.
I realize that four months might not sound like a big deal, but when you have been waiting your whole life for an event and someone tells you you need to wait even longer for that event, you might throw something. You might cry. You will probably do jumping jacks in your kitchen to keep your heart inside your body. You will definitely, without a doubt, scream.
I did all of those things, and I’m not embarrassed to admit it.
Because even though my editor assured me that the push had nothing to do with me/my book, but with logistics inside the publishing house—calendars and shifting schedules and staff…
And even though I know that he is short an editor, and that things pile up quickly—manuscripts, certainly, but also legal issues and contracts and meetings and a whole host of corporate goings-on that I’m not privy to…
And even though deep down in some rational place I don’t often have access to, I knew there was a chance this would happen, because publication dates move a fair amount of time, for a variety of reasons, even when everything up to that point has been a breeze, and things for me hadn’t been a breeze. I’d been orphaned, which meant that someone else at Hyperion Ave had taken the lead on my book, someone who had his own projects and deadlines and edits and issues to contend with before he even looked at mine…
Even knowing all those things, I still felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment reading that email.
Another f’cking disappointment.
I told you last week about optimism, how it can keep a writer going through all kinds of set-backs and rejections—but nothing crushes optimism more brutally than disappointment.
Disappointment, even a little one, can inflict a lot of damage. It can feel like running 26 miles of a marathon only to be tripped at the finish line, screaming why me (a la Nancy Kerrigan in 1994). Sometimes, it feels like insanity. Like banging your head into the same wall over and over again. Like we’re never gonna get there.
The big question is… Where is there?
Where do we think we are going?
Because, truth be told, disappointment strikes at every stop in the road to publication—from the no on a full from a dream agent, to the pages of revisions on a draft you thought was perfect, to pub day and after (from what I’ve heard). You can’t control your sales, after all. Or your Goodreads reviews. Or your next deal. And on and on.
I came across this decade-old article, written by the writer Kameron Hurley, called “On Persistence,” that I think perfectly sums up this feeling:
“It was being confronted with the fact that writing is a business, and expectations are very often crushed, and your chances for breaking out are pretty grim.
It’s persisting in the game after you know what it’s really all about. After the shine wears off. It’s persisting after all your hopes and aspirations bang head first into reality.
That’s when it starts. The rest of your life was just a warm-up.
Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.”
I won’t give up.
I will still drop everything and hole up in my room to finish edits before my deadline. I will still spend hours and weeks and years figuring out the right structure and POV and tense, and meticulously working on edits until I get things just right. I will do all my work, knowing that nothing will be easy, that there will be changes and upsets and many, many things I can’t control.
I let myself feel the disappointments, but then I will twist them into positives. Yes, my pub date was pushed, but May is a better time for thrillers. Yes, I might have to tell my ITW debut group, but hey look! my book is launching the same day the festival begins.
I will continue to share all this here, because having information and being prepared might take the sting out of a disappointment for someone out there. And, anyway, now I have about 16 more newsletters to play with!
On the bright side, May is a better month to debut in, because booklovers are searching for the perfect novel to read over the summer holidays. Plus, most people are broke in January, thanks to celebrating Christmas. Good luck with the launch, Laura. I will go pre-order your book now! 🙂
As soon as I saw the word “pushed,” my heart hurt for you. But your piece was so beautiful and uplifting that I know, without knowing you, that your new pub date is just as it should be. Stay positive and keep writing. You’ve got a big future ahead of you!