Maryann McFadden Makes Her Second Debut

I first came across Maryann McFadden when she told me about her hyper-pink book cover in response to a GalleyCat item I’d written about a “literary” novelist with a disdain for women’s fiction. McFadden’s book has just been published… although, as she explains in this essay, this isn’t the first time. (And, as you may know, I’m a sucker for self-published success stories…)

I felt like a fraud the night of my book launch for The Richest Season. 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.

Despite a monsoon of biblical proportions, and a guarantee of walking in drenched as a sewer rat due to very little parking, people came. Lots of them. 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 lectern and began telling the crowd of my long journey to this moment. Freelance writing and teaching a bit during my first ten years after college. Then leaving writing completely while I pursued a real estate career, and more money, to help support my growing family. 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. And finally, how The Richest Season began as my thesis about a lonely corporate wife who longed for more in her life. And there I was, a grandmother, finally entering my own “richest season.”

I was kissed, hugged, backslapped, and congratulated. And then I sold and signed 100 books!

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8 June 2008 | guest authors |