I’d also told no one about my other secret: The dream that I could somehow get my novel the attention it deserved and become the “real deal,” an author whose book has been “chosen” by a “real” publisher.įor the next six months I was a woman on a mission. They thought I was “the real deal.” No one there knew my little secret: I had self-published The Richest Season.
Still, I walked away feeling a bit squeamish. I was kissed, hugged, backslapped, and congratulated. And there I was, a grandmother, finally entering my own “richest season.” And finally, how The Richest Season began as my thesis about a lonely corporate wife who longed for more in her life. Years later, when I had time to actually miss writing, deciding to go back to school for a master’s degree, as my own children headed off to college themselves. Then leaving writing completely while I pursued a real estate career, and more money, to help support my growing family. Freelance writing and teaching a bit during my first ten years after college. I stood at the lectern and began telling the crowd of my long journey to this moment. I actually filled the historic front parlors of Centenary College in my small New Jersey town, where twenty years earlier I’d been an adjunct writing instructor who dreamed of being a novelist. I stood at the window, early as usual, waiting for people to show (hopefully!), while trying to quiet the butterflies swooping through my gut like little stunt pilots, as the evening sky lit up with a roar.ĭespite a monsoon of biblical proportions, and a guarantee of walking in drenched as a sewer rat due to very little parking, people came.
I felt like a fraud the night of my book launch for The Richest Season. (And, as you may know, I’m a sucker for self-published success stories…)
McFadden’s book has just been published… although, as she explains in this essay, this isn’t the first time. I first came across Maryann McFadden when she told me about her hyper-pink book cover in response to a Galle圜at item I’d written about a “literary” novelist with a disdain for women’s fiction.
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