Weirdness Journal Entry #1: The Mercury Cafe

I have now been in Publishing World for seven or eight years, and in that time I’ve never met any of the Publishing World main characters in real life. I’ve never met my agent, for example, never met any of the people who work at the publishing house (or any of the other authors there, many of whom I have become very close to online). I’ve never met any of the people working behind the scenes doing foreign translations or marketing or film rights stuff. There are even people I only communicate with through other people; I've not shared so much as an email with them myself. It’s a very disembodied thing, happening over the phone and the internet, which can make it feel a little unreal. 

And it’s not just the publishing professionals with whom I’ve felt this disconnect; it’s the whole literary ecosystem. Lake Union, who published my first two books, is in the States, so obviously they market my books to American readers (and they do a VERY good job of that). That’s where my readers live, where the book clubs are who invite me to join them on Zoom. Like the agents and editors and publicists, I don’t really get to meet readers. I get lovely emails from them, and they tag me on Instagram, but I very rarely get to see them face to face.

People say, you’re an author! That’s so fun! And I’m like, Yes, very fun! But…I’m not actually sure any of it’s real. What I might be is the victim of an elaborate hoax. It might actually be quite embarrassing.

So last spring, when my agent, Victoria, and I started talking about my third book, I threw out kind of a weird idea: I said, I want to stay with Lake Union, because I love my editors there, I love the way they treat their authors, I love their cover design and marketing and communication and—well, many other things. I love Lake Union. 

But.

Could we possibly, I asked her, hang on to the Canadian rights and sell those to a Canadian publisher? I even had one in mind: Radiant Press, an indie publisher right here in Regina. I met John Kennedy, the co-publisher of Radiant, at a Penny University event and had a brief conversation about publishing and marketing and creativity that was exciting to me, and I’d gone home and researched them a bit and felt very interested in working with them.

But also, and I didn’t say this to Victoria at the time, I’d long had this romantic idea of being an author who lived in the same city as their publisher—like every author in every movie, who writes in their New York apartment and then strolls down the street for an in-person meeting with their publishing team, who is VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! and leans across a table—a real table, with a good, solid cup of coffee on it—gesticulating wildly as they discuss cover design and marketing strategies and launch parties. I think I’ve grown out of my desire to actually live in New York, but I’ve developed a Canadian version of that daydream: I've pictured myself in Regina’s Cathedral Village, in the Mercury Cafe, in one of those bright red booths by the window, my editor across the table holding a cup of coffee and speaking in that Publishing World lingo I’ve grown so fond of but don't often get to use in my everyday life. 

This is the daydream I’ve been having for well over a year now. I’m not making this up. 

You’re thinking, Suzy, why would I think you’re making this up?

You’ll see. Hang on.

Victoria is wonderful. She is smart and industry-savvy and willing to try new things. Still, this plan made her pause. She warned me that holding back rights was a risky move, that most publishers wanted world rights, and that if I kept those rights and then couldn’t sell them, the book would simply not be released in Canada. 

At all.

So I paused too. For all of 30 seconds. 

And then I was like, “Let’s try it anyway.”

Because I had that vision, about the red booths and the coffee, about being part of the Canadian publishing ecosystem and meeting my readers and not feeling like I didn’t exist in my own country.

I should try to make a long story short, here, because a lot happened between this and the next thing. We sent the book off to Lake Union in...October? I think? 

We had a tentative offer in December; it came through while I was sitting in the school gymnasium waiting for Scarlett's Christmas concert to start.

The deal memo came in January, and I signed the contract in March—for world rights except Canada. It was official! We were going to try to sell the Canadian rights all by themselve. It was a bit leap-of-faithy, and pretty scary. What if Radiant didn't want my book? 

Then again: what if they did?

Ah, here's where I can shorten the long story a bit more: they did. 

Phew. Right? PHEW. 

I signed with them in November, a little over a year after sending the manuscript to Lake Union. (Publishing is nothing if not the actual slowest thing in the world.)

And then, in January of 2024, I got an email from Debra, the publisher at Radiant Press, and—I'm being 100% honest with you right now—in this email she asked me if I would like to meet up at the Mercury Cafe for coffee to discuss my book. 

It was only in that moment that I realized how weirdly specific my daydream had been, about meeting up with a publisher in one of the red booths at the Mercury Cafe. It's not like I live in a tiny village with one local watering hole, you know what I mean? There are many, many places to conduct business in Regina, Saskatchewan. But my brain was like, "THE FIFTIES DINER ON 13TH. THAT'LL BE IT." 

And it was.

Our meeting happened on Tuesday. I walked up to the Mercury, experiencing the oddest sense of deja vu, because it was just like in my daydream. And John was there, standing out front, and he turned to me and said, "Ah—Suzy?" 

And I said, "Yes, hello!" 

And we shook hands and he told me Debra would be there soon and we went into the diner and we stood there for a moment, surveying the space—tables and chairs to the left, the big red window booths to the right. John gestured at one of the booths, like he knew he was supposed to, and said, "Shall we sit here?"

Do you want to know what the weirdest thing about all of this is? My book, the one we met at the Mercury to discuss, is about a family who finds themselves at the end of the world. And as they face this completely unprecedented thing, they find that it feels like something they remember. And they keep having these moments of deja vu, these glitchy little things that happen that make it seem like they've seen into the future, but it doesn't feel to them like seeing the future, it feels like remembering it, like having a daydream and then having the daydream come true. 

So, I don't know, man. I'm having a weird time. You don't know the half of it.

ANYWAY.

The meeting was wonderful; it was exactly what I dreamed it would be, because of course it was. We sat in the big red booth for two and a half hours and I drank probably five cups of coffee. We talked about my book and about books in general and about cover design and marketing and launch parties and it felt collaborative and fun and New Yorky, but in a very Saskatchewany way. 

Life is so weird, isn't it?

Weird and good.

A New Project

I’m back at the Bean this morning. This is no small feat today; it’s almost -50 with the windchill and the walk from my car to the coffee shop was treacherous—by the time I made it inside, my eyeballs were frozen like grapes in their sockets and I’d completely forgotten what it was like to feel warmth or comfort or joy. Victoria was standing behind the counter and I stared at her for a moment, trying to catch my breath. 

“It’s cold out there!” I said at last. 

Because I am a writer, a wordsmith, a capital C Creative. 

I wonder how many times this past week and today and this coming week Victoria has had and will have this exact sentence spoken to her in exactly this way. It makes me sad to realize I am so derivative, so pedestrian, so lacking in pizazz or originality.

But I am cold, okay, my brain is frozen, the synapses are not firing; I am like a car who needs someone with a bigger, more durable winter brain to come along and hook me up to jumper cables.

In lieu of that, I am writing here, on this blog, trying to jump start my brain by myself. 

I’m working on a new project. 

I Think We’ve Been Here Before comes out next September, which means that I have eight months ahead of marketing and promotion and meetings and publicity. In some ways, this is my least favourite part of publishing. I hate—have always hated—talking about my books. (I thought this shyness would go away with time but it hasn’t.) But there are also things that happen in this period of time that I like a lot and am so excited for. Reaching out to my favourite book bloggers to send ARCs, taking fun little pictures for social media, brainstorming ways to make connections with booksellers and libraries and readers, holding the finished copies in my hands and reading early reviews. It sounds like such a contradiction to say I hate promoting my book but also I love promoting my book and I don’t know what to tell you: I contain multitudes. 

But I have found that the very best use of this time is to work on The Next Thing, so that’s what I’m doing, and I’m having a very nice time. It’s quite weird and I’m at the stage where it’s new and shiny and I’m just watching the words appear on the screen like someone else is writing through my fingers, just daydreaming and letting the story be as strange as it wants to be without having to consider whether an editor at a publishing house will be able to win over an acquisitions board with it. In some ways, this is my favourite part of publishing. I love—have always loved—being surprised by an idea as it forms, daydreaming about where it could go and where it will land. But there is also a very uncomfortable aspect to this stage, if I’m being honest, an impatience to get the whole thing out and send it off to my agent, to see if has any merit or if I’m just being silly. It sounds like such a contradiction to say I love the beginning part of writing a book but also that I hate it and I don’t know what to tell you. 

Okay. I think my brain battery has been sufficiently jump-started, so I’m going to get back at it. May we all survive this ridiculous polar vortex.

I Think We've Been Here Before

Happy New Year! 

I hope your holidays were eventful, if you like eventful holidays, or uneventful if that's what you prefer. I hope you partied hard or slept a lot, or some pleasant combination of both.

As for me, I did more partying than sleeping and I'm tired but very happy to get back into routine and eat something healthy...right after I finish all the left over snacks I've hidden from the kids on top of the fridge.

Anyway! New year, new news: I've written another book and it's Official:

It’s called I Think We’ve Been Here Before and I’ve been describing it to people as slice of life speculative fiction—think, the coziness of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Café with the something's-not-quite-right undercurrent of Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. It comes out September 2024. 

Here's a picture of me signing the contract, for posterity (not sure why posterity wants it, but anyway):

And here's the synopsis, straight from my publisher:

With the end of the world predicted, reality bends in an unexpectedly quirky and heartwarming novel about human connection and the meaning of life and death by the bestselling author of Sorry I Missed You.

Marlen and Hilda Jorgensen’s family has received two significant pieces of news: one, Marlen has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Two, a cosmic blast is set to render humanity extinct within a matter of months. It seems the coming Christmas on their Saskatchewan farm could be their last.

Preparing for the inevitable, they navigate the time they have left together. Marlen and Hilda have channeled their energy into improbably prophetic works of art. Hilda’s elderly father receives a longed-for visitor from his past. Hilda’s teenaged nephew goes missing, and his mother refuses to believe the world is ending. All the while, Hilda’s daughter struggles to find her way home from Berlin with the help of an oddly familiar stranger. For everyone, there’s an unsettling feeling that this unprecedented reality is something they remember…

I sold this book to Lake Union, the magnificent publisher behind my first two books, last spring, and because I sold it on spec. (a general synopsis of the book idea and first three chapters) I had to then write it super fast, which was exhilarating and terrifying and all-consuming. I spent the summer editing it, working early mornings and late nights, and now it’s in the weird purgatoryish place between editing and publishing, where my only job is to convince as many people as possible to buy it. (like so: I THINK WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE is available for preorder for all of my non-Canadian friends wherever books are sold. You can order it from your local indie, which is always my favorite option, but it’s also on Chapters, B&N, Target, Amazon, etc. Canadian friends: I will absolutely let you know when it’s available for you.)

Would you like to see the cover? This is not it:

That’s right—I said not. The graphic above is one of the cover designs that didn’t quite make the final cut. Isn’t it so pretty though? It’s currently the lock screen on my phone. The artist is Philip Pascuzzo, whose name you might recognize—as well as designing that iconic little blue bird formerly known as the Twitter symbol, he also designed the cover for my first novel, Valencia and Valentine. And now, he’s responsible for the beautiful artwork you see above, and also for the artwork that will be on the final cover of this, my third novel. 

The actual cover: 

I love it. 

But wait! More news! Just a little bit more.

I’m extremely pleased to announce that the incredible Radiant Press will be releasing this book in Canada.  I met them a few years ago and had a very fun conversation about publishing and creativity and marketing and I remember leaving that conversation all amped up and trying to brainstorm ways that I could work with them in the future.

Well, as they say, the future is now.

Okay. That's all the sharable news I have at the moment, but I'll keep you in the loop.

Thank you so much for being here, reading this, reading my weird little books, being so great. I'm thankful for you—if there were no you, there would be no any of this, and I would just be bored all the time.