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Writing Tips Oasis

Writing Tips Oasis - A website dedicated to helping writers to write and publish books.

My Book Deal Moment by Emma Straub

By Novelicious

This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.

1385673_512632012168190_979847906_nI sold my first novel as dramatically as possible – I was sitting in the lobby of a grand hotel in Palm Beach, being serenaded by a pianist. The room was empty except for me, said pianist, and my husband and mother-in-law. We’d just had a book club for my short story collection over tea, and my mother-in-law’s friends had all gone home, tippling off into the Floridian night.

The story collection had been published by a one-man-band sort of outfit, who would’ve sold books out of his garage, if he’d had a garage. I ended up paying him, if that tells you anything about the arrangement. My agent called with the news that my very favorite editor had made a pre-emptive bid, effectively shutting down the competition and declaring her love. I cried. I was wearing a fancy dress and make-up and I’d already had several glasses of champagne, but I would have cried anyway. My husband cried, too. There had been other offers over the previous few days, all of which I now recall with a dreamy soft-focus, as if they were shot through lenses coated in Vaseline, but those offers all went out the window.

I went to the gift shop at the hotel and bought myself a small ceramic jewelry box painted to look like the ceiling of the room we’d been sitting in, desperate to have a memento of the moment. It holds my most treasured things, and is itself one of my most treasured things. It’s not easy to have a perfect moment in life – I can think of maybe three, the other two being the exchange of my wedding vows and the birth of my child – but selling my book was one of them. Maybe I need to spend more time in grand rooms, waiting for the phone to ring. 

Emma's book, The Vacationers, is out now.

Filed Under: Cressida McLaughlin, My Book Deal Moment

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