Join Me

It’s a vulnerable endeavor, to invite people on my novel-publishing journey. Publishing a literary novel these days is not merely achieved by writing an excellent novel, enlisting a great editor, and then getting it into the right hands. Many worthy novels won’t get published, and that unfortunate fact is often not due to author negligence. Simply put, many gorgeous or meaningful or absorbing novels won’t get published because people are not reading. Not like they used to. You know it. Look around. Go out in public–on the bus, on the train, in a cafe–even the library. You know what people are looking at. I don’t have to name it. You know. And because most people are not reading books, publishers are not selling books–not like they used to. And agents aren’t bothering to read my manuscript submission if they believe they can’t sell it to publishers.

Currently, agents mostly sell romance and fantasy to the publishers. I don’t write in those genres, so agents don’t care much about my work–they can’t afford to care. They are struggling. They have bills to pay, so they have to champion the writers whom they believe they can effectively pitch and sell to the editors at the publishing houses. And the small publishers who don’t need agents as gatekeepers only publish a few books a year, and thousands of excellent manuscripts are hitting their submission portals regularly.

This lack of readership began even before the dreaded yet helpful device provided users with addictive reels. I will share a quote I’ve quoted for years. In a January/February 2008 interview with Jofie Ferrari-Adler for Poets &Writers Magazine, Lynn Nesbit, long-time agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, said agents and editors are “nervous” about fiction because it is so difficult to sell. She said, “Twenty-five years ago an editor would say, ‘Oh, this has promise,’ and sign it up. Today, editors want to say no rather than yes. Unless they see it as a big book.” She goes on to say (again, this quote was written almost twenty years ago) this: “I also feel there are fewer and fewer civilians—I mean people outside of our business—who I meet who have time to read. They all say, ‘I’d love to read, but I’m just too busy.’ What worries me is that people are on blogs, Web sites—there is a lot of that going on—but they aren’t reading books.”

So here I am, writing a blog and asking you to read it (and inadvertently, to not spend your time reading a book).

But my ultimate goal is to place a lovely book in your hands.

With that in mind, will you join me on my novel-publishing journey?

My novel, The Light of the Bartender’s Daughter, was a finalist for the 2026 Orison Prize in Fiction. In the past, I have not done much with happy writing news beyond Facebook and Instagram posts. That has seemed enough, and those posts were usually for short-story publications, poems, essays, or even my slim little pocket book, Mars. But now, it is clear that I have to be my book’s strongest advocate. I have to do more than just share a few words; I have to share feelings and ideas and experiences that might make you actually care about all those words I wrote. To make you want to carve out time to explore a made-up little world, created with love and passion and curiosity and research. And it turns out, I need to do this before the book is even in print, so that when the story is bound with a pretty cover, you will already be excited to open it up to page one, like I will be.

Despite the obstacles before me, I am hopeful. I’ve gotten lovely feedback so far. The Orison editor said it is beautiful, a fine work, that he wishes he could publish it. My expert reader/ editor said there is so much heart in it, there were times he simply couldn’t put it down, and that it sings like a violin.

There is another reason I am determined to publish this novel. My mother died in January 2025. The character of the bartender in this novel is based on my mom; you could say she is my mom. With that said, this story is completely fiction except for the inciting incident, which is based in fact, or based, at least, on a memory of something she told me when I was probably too young to hear. The entire novel is created from my imagination, imagining my mom and bringing her most lovable self to the page.

It is my hope that just as I breathed life and love into these pages, by myself, hour after hour, month after month, you will now join me as I continue the next steps. I want you to love these two characters, Evelyn and Lucy, mother and daughter, as much as I do. I want you to meet them. I want you to join them on their journey, but first, to join me on mine, so we can all meet together.

It would be wonderful if you would subscribe.

Warm wishes,

Thea