THE STORY SO FAR…
May 21st, 2008The book’s here. FedExed from New York. Pristine, with un-thumbed pages. A cover without a coffee cup ring. Dry square corners as yet unsoaked by a reading in the bath. It begs to be scuffed up a little, in someone else’s hands, a stranger reading it on a train, because then it will really exist, beyond my desk, my family, my friends.
But it’s already had its own little train ride to get here.
I’ll skip the how-I-wrote-it-bit, and move on to The Deal.
THE DEAL
They’ve missed a nought. Possibly two noughts. I’m walking down the stairs as the email from my American agent Deborah Schneider pings in on my BlackBerry, confirming that Berkley, part of the Penguin group, want to make an offer for my first novel, Face Value. This is good news. Except that because the screen is so tiny and I’m so clumsy negotiating the trip trip tripping down the stairs, I can’t read the digits correctly. I stop, and move my finger over them, counting. No, they’ve definitely missed a nought.
When you spend years writing a novel, (not I should stress because you’re aiming for the Booker prize but more because life gets in the way sometimes) finding out how much money authors get for their book deals is an important part of the process. It’s the carrot on the end of the stick. The reason you can be bothered to finish the damn thing. So when the advance is clearly missing a nought, it’s a tad disappointing. I’m gutted. (And yes, I know I probably shouldn’t be writing this openly, I know I should probably be fuelling some fantasy that all writers get gazillion dollar book deals, but somehow that doesn’t feel right. I’d rather tell it the way it is).
My English agent, Ali Gunn, emails me. “This is great news. You should take it.”
Really? What about the missing noughts?
“What about Lauren Weisberger?” I email Deborah, who patiently explains that there are two types of book advance. The really big ones and the really little ones. I fall into the latter category because I am not writing a thinly veiled parody of someone famous as in The Devil Wears Prada; neither am I “someone like Plum Sykes”. And did I know how virtually impossible it is to get published in the States as a women’s author of commercial fiction, that even London Times bestsellers can’t always get publishing deals?
Comforted by this, I decide to accept. It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s a chance to earn out my advance and move on quickly to my royalties which will be humungous because obviously it will be a best seller and made into a film starring Owen Wilson who will find me devastatingly attractive and will take me away from all this to a beach house in Malibu where we will live happily ever after. (Quite how my husband and children would feel about this I don’t know, but maybe we could have one of those open marriages). (Perhaps this is why I am writing fiction).
THE EDIT
Emily Beth Rapoport is my editor on the book. She is young, hungry for success in a non-I’ll-stab-you-in-the-back kinda way, and her double-barreled first name has a reassuringly honest and old-fashioned feel to it, in perfect harmony with my double-barreled second name. Most importantly she loves the book. She sends me precise, well-structured emails and I can see we will work well together. She doesn’t make huge changes, but she makes important changes, and the suggestions she makes are all things I have thought of at some point along the way.
A list arrives of non-US friendly words, which includes things like Portakabin and Ali and I have a quiet chuckle. Oh those funny Americans with their TOMAYTO to our TOMARTO.
Our stumbling block is the title which I ruminate on for months before I come back to the one Emily Beth has suggested in the first place, Face Value.
I await the cover with trepidation. As a former beauty director on magazines I have become super-particular about layouts and design. Tney haven’t asked my opinion on anything concerning the cover. I will hate it. It will be pink. There will probably be a stiletto on it. Or a lipstick. Or both. I will hate it. It arrives and it is jaw-droppingly beautiful yet relevant to the content of the novel, original and enticing. Thank you, Rita Frangie.
THE SECRET WEAPON
My friend Jo Fox-Tutchener who has her own press agency, Beauty Seen, (high five to Jo!) has introduced me via email to Marian Keyes, the best-selling author of Anybody Out There. In commercial women’s fiction terms, Marian is God. She is also extremely nice, and offers to read my book and give me a review if she likes it, which I can then stick on the cover. This is huge for a debut author, as it means that readers unsure whether to invest their $14 in an unknown can trust Marian’s judgment.
An email arrives from her on a particularly bleak and depressing Sunday that makes me want to cry with gratitude and relief.
From: Marian Keyes
Date: 13 January 2008 16:33:40 GMT
To: “‘Kathleen Baird-Murray’”
Subject: RE: face value
Dear Kathleen, thank you so much for sending me a copy of Face Value and I’m sorry it took me so long to read it. I know how hellish it is waiting for a response. In the end, I read it in one sitting, from beginning to end, which says a lot! You’ve chosen a fascinating subject for a novel and your prose is deliciously taut and sparky. I’m sure so many thousands of readers will find the expose of the plastic surgery industry - and indeed the symbiotic relationships between womens’ magazines and the beauty industry - highly educational. It was so weird because when I was quite near the end I thought ‘Kathleen should really send this to Naomi Wolf’ and then 2 pages later you mentioned The Beauty Myth. Is this something you or your publishers have considered, sending the manuscript to ‘friendly’ feminists. I think this subject matter and the serious but deft way you’ve handled it deserves a ’serious’ quote. It really is rare for popular fiction to handle such an incendiary controversial subject so well and it would be fantastic to reach as wide an audience as possible and a quote for a well-known feminist writer would really have impact. (If I’m teaching my granny to suck eggs, forgive me!) Please feel free to use any of my above heartfelt praise for a cover quote but I do feel inadequate and that I’m not the best person to do it justice. Face Value deserves endorsement from a heavy-hitter.
Congratulations on such a worthy debut novel and I wish you every joy and happiness on publication and with all your future books. I hope our paths cross in person one day.
All the very best
Marian
THE PUBLICITY
January. The book launches in June. I awake in a cold sweat (metaphorically speaking that is, we do have central heating so I’m not cold, and ladies don’t sweat, they glow) and jump on a plane to America because I feel an urge to get a ball rolling.
Berkley’s budget for my book seems to be focused on getting it into the front of book stores, something for which all publishers have to pay. This is a good thing. My first book, How to be Beautiful, the Thinking Woman’s Guide, which was published in England by Vermilion wasn’t so lucky - in spite of having loads of brilliant reviews in all the national press, it languished upstairs in the bit next to Rosemary Conley’s diet tips or whatever, and the thinking women didn’t think to go upstairs and find it. (She was probably too busy thinking about things). But I’d like to know that we are all working towards the same goal, getting some press, figuring out the launch. Time to meet and greet.
I meet my publisher, Susan Allison, and Emily Beth and the publicist Mary Ann Zissimos in an Italian restaurant. My publicist is funny and energetic and wiry and looks like Juno would look if she grew up and got a job as a publicist at Berkley. I’m so nervous I don’t eat and I talk non-stop. It appears that when it comes to getting press, any contacts I have will be invaluable. The problem is all my contacts are in London and it’s New York that counts now.
THE PLUM EFFECT
“Do you know Plum Sykes?” says Mary Ann.
“Plum Sykes? Well I’ve met her twice but…”
I have met Plum Sykes twice. Once when she was dating a rock-star and was in the process of writing her first novel for which she had an advance with plenty of noughts on the end. I remember her being chatty and funny and telling me about how she’d written a very clear and thorough structure and knew exactly how she was going to do it.
The second time was when I was doing some work on a consultancy basis with a make-up artist friend. Before Plum arrived to meet her, I was asked my professional opinion as to which lipsticks I liked. I picked out a certain Chanel pink, which I loved for its frothy give-your-face-a lift nature. Everyone thought it was awful. Plum walked in an hour later and picked out the very same one and suddenly they all liked it. Hmph. But thinking about it now, that incident does seem to epitomise what I can only call, The Plum Effect. Like it or not, Plum is hugely influential, especially in America. Where my book is published.
I wish I hadn’t been so sulky about the lipstick.
I’m hoping she won’t have remembered.
THE WEBSITE, THE PUBLICITY PICS, THE STRESS OF IT ALL
Mary Ann hands me some examples of websites from other authors and tells me it’s a good idea to get a website. All the author websites I see are full of lots of cheery chat about their kids with the odd recipe thrown in for good measure. And do I have publicity pictures? Can I get more endorsements for the novel, besides Marian Keyes? I return to London overwhelmed by how much I have to do.
THE ODD RECIPE THROWN IN FOR GOOD MEASURE
THE CAST:
Sean Gleason, international photographer of considerable repute in fashion, music and advertising worlds.
Lucia Pica, international make-up artist of considerable repute in fashion, music, and advertising worlds.
Me: well.. me.
ME: “Hi Sean, I know your girlfriend’s having a baby like tomorrow or some day really soon but could you please drop everything and come round to my flat and take a picture of me for my website and publicity. I can’t pay you anything but I’ll cook you a shepherd’s pie.”
SEAN GLEASON: “Ok.”
ME: “Hi Lucia. I know you’ve just flown in from shooting Russian Vogue on some super gorgeous girl with six foot long legs and bambi-eyes, and haven’t had a day off in six months but can you please come round and make me look totally gorgeous for no fee whatsoever?”
LUCIA: “Ok.”
My Recipe for Sheperd’s Pie:
You will need:
One red onion
Garlic (if you can be bothered)
One Aubergine
One large carrot
Mushrooms
Red wine
Organic ground minced beef
A couple of fresh tomatoes
Flour
A tin of tomatoes
Fresh parsley
Potatoes
Butter
Milk
Olive Oil
Ground Cumin
Kallo organic beef stock
Fry the onion in a little olive oil until soft. Use one of those big Le Creuset casserole type dishes. Chop the garlic, aubergine and throw those in too. Grate the carrot and add. Add the beef and fry until brown, throwing in a generous pinch of cumin. When it gets a little dry add a big splash of red wine. When that’s evaporated add the mushrooms. Sprinkle in a big wooden spoon ful of flour and stir. Chop the tomatoes and fling those in. Add about a pint of beef stock. Maybe make that two stock cubes. Then the tin of tomatoes. Leave to simmer on a super low heat with the lid on, or put in the oven on a super-low heat for about two hours. Take one of those plungey blender things and whiz it to a pulp for people who can’t chew or kids who don’t want to see any vegetables. Sprinkle on a little chopped parsley. Cover with a thick layer of mash which you will have made earlier from the potatoes milk and butter, sorry I forgot to tell you about that. Bake under a grill for a few minutes to make the mash look more attractive and less like you’re in an old peoples home. Et voila!
Revived by the shepherd’s pie, Sean’s skills and Lucia’s make up artistry (and obviously my skills as a supermodel) make me look gorgeous and lovely.
SECRET WEAPON NO 2
Pascal Dangin. Enough said.
(In case you’re wondering what on earth I’m talking about, somewhere on this website there will be a link to an article I wrote for the Sunday Times Style section… it tells all).
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW, IT’S WHO YOU KNOW
With Mary Ann in New York and myself in London, we frantically email all “the long leads” , the magazines who work three months ahead. Vogue. Harper’s Bazaar. Marie Claire. Lucky. Elle. Cosmopolitan. Lots of others.
I write a series of sycophantic, bordering on desperate emails to people I have never met, with - in the subject heading anyway – the name of the friend who knows them. Because while I might not be Plum Sykes, I do at least know some people here who have worked in New York and still have friends there, namely Harriet Mays-Powell, the fashion director at Nymagazine, who I used to work with at Tatler, and some other Brit magazine girls based here like Jenny Dyson and Antonia Whyatt, all of whom have been incredibly generous at sharing names. Some reply instantly, warmly. Glenda Bailey, editor of Harpers Bazaar, someone whose work I have admired since she launched Marie Claire in the UK years ago, sends me a quick line back saying she’s away but her beauty editor will read it. (I don’t think she does though I could be wrong).
I WAIT A MONTH AND NOTHING HAPPENS
Because, only about four of the ten books sent reached their destinations. Mary Ann explains the courier company for Penguin can only deliver to addresses where there is someone there to sign for it. This doesn’t make sense to me as all the addresses except perhaps one, were sent to offices.
I apologise via email to one editor, Jean Godfrey June at Lucky magazine. She writes back: “I feel your pain.”
The books are sent out again, this time they get there. But we’ve lost about six weeks in the process.
1 response so far ↓
1 Rebecca Lovett // Jun 6, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Kathleen, I love you!
Love your niece,
Rebecca Louise