WAGaBoD? Part 7: Waiting is the name of the game
Hurry up, wait, then hand over your baby to a brilliant stranger. Plus: book news and TWO restaurants of the week.
Welcome back to WAIT. Annabelle Got a Book Deal? We have collectively made it to part 7 of this series, wherein I take you deep through the roots of “The Mango Tree” and how this book came to fruition. If you’d like to catch up on parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, there are your links.
In part 6, we did it! We got the book deal. I signed with Little, Brown and its hugely talented senior editor Vivian Lee. That was May 2022. And that was when the waiting started.
The thing about publishing that makes it OH SO INCREDIBLY DIFFERENT from journalism is the waiting. Sure, you have a book deal, but can you tell anyone about it?
Nope.
You have to wait.
Contract details must be negotiated — from who gets to read the audio book (I, at least, get to audition!), to what percentage of money I earn on each sale (audiobook CDs net me a lot! just FYI :), to who gets a say on cover art, jacket design, jacket copy … and the list goes on. These negotiations take place in the ether of the interwebs, through emails that fly from my agent/agency and their lawyers to my editor/publisher and their lawyers, then, eventually, to me, so my agent can explain what these 15 pages of words mean and how they will affect me and the trajectory of “The Mango Tree.”
Once the flying is complete and the lawyers are content and my agent is content and my editor is content, and I at least understand what’s happening and am willing to nod along that, yes, I believe I too am content, then — THEN we sign the contract. And THEN we can tell the whole world that, yes, indeed, I have a book deal. And yes, indeed, this book will be real.
In ~ two years.
Waiting for the contract is merely a drop in the bucket of all the waiting that is to come when publishing a book. I signed my contract with Little, Brown on July 11, 2022. I received my first round of edits on the book exactly four months later on Nov. 11, 2022. In the world of journalism, four months is enough time to complete a longform project or two, 16-some restaurant reviews, 16-some newsletters, and 30-50 daily stories. But in the world of publishing, four months is the blink of an eye.
Four months is, from what sooo many fellow authors have told me, a MUCH-better-than-average turnaround for a first batch of edits. I’ve had friends wait eight months, 10 months, 15 months (!!!) for their edits. My wait was nothing compared to theirs, and that’s a testament to Vivian and her editorial diligence.
Still, those four months felt like forever. I went from thinking about, fussing over and fretting with this project nonstop, to taking a huge step away from it and letting someone else do the thinking/fussing/fretting. It was like birthing a bouncing little book baby, then handing it off to someone else’s care.
One incredible thing that came of those four months was a meeting with Curtis Chin. Curtis co-founded the Asian American Writers' Workshop in New York City and is a Big Deal in the worlds of writing and filmmaking. He happened to be at a journalism conference I was attending in August 2022. He also happens to be another of Vivian’s authors. Curtis’s first book “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant” published last month and was recently featured on CBS Saturday Morning.
When I saw Curtis and I were at the same event, I messaged him on Twitter (RIP). He answered 4 seconds later and agreed to meet me for coffee. That coffee lasted more than two hours. Curtis is one of the most open, generous and genuinely helpful people I’ve met throughout this publishing process. I’m sure it helps that he and I share an editor, but his frankness about his writing and his book and his trek to get it published made me feel so much better about my own journey.
In Curtis’s memoir, he writes about growing up in his family’s legendary restaurant, Chung’s, in Detroit’s Chinatown as the area was experiencing white flight and diversifying in every way imaginable. His story is at once delicious, funny and poignant. He offers the reader a lens of egg rolls and chow mein, through which we gain access to a range of communities — Black, Latine, Asian, LGBTQ+ — that only intersect in very special places. Places like Chung’s.
If you’d like to read more, you can order Curtis’s book at bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or wherever you buy books. You can also check out a copy from your local library (that also helps authors!).
In modern book news
I had the honor of joining my editor, Vivian, last month when Kundiman honored her for her work to diversify books, and the publishing industry as a whole, at their annual gala in New York. When I tell you I am working with A Force, it is not an exaggeration.
This book y’all. Since pre-orders started and the first advanced copies went to bookstores and critics, the swell of support for “The Mango Tree” continues to blow my mind. We have been contacted by booksellers from Santa Monica to New Orleans to St. Petersburg, all of whom are hoping to host events for “The Mango Tree’s” launch (my heart!). Turns out, mangoes, Florida and the complexities of mother-daughter relationships strike some chords with folks all over this country. It looks to be a busy April : )
If you are one such critic/reviewer/bookseller/event-hoster, and you can’t get your hands on an advanced reader copy of “The Mango Tree,” please let me know. The first round of ARCs went quickly. But we are hoping to have more soon, and I can help get you one.
Restaurants of the Week
In Southwest Florida, I had the pleasure of checking out the new High Tide Social House in Cape Coral. It sits at the end of Tarpon Point Marina in what, I think, used to be a spot for renting boats. The space has become a chicly cozy waterfront restaurant with stiff cocktails and a simple-yet-satisfying menu of pizzas, sandwiches, salads and entrees. While I wanted to try the fried shrimp coated in salt & vinegar chips, I kept getting talked into pizzas on my visits. And honestly, I’m not mad about it.
Outside of Southwest Florida, let me tell you about Estrellita. Situated in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta, Estrellita is a sliver of a restaurant that packs huge Filipino flavors into all it serves (the lumpia! the barbecue! the adobo! the shatteringly crisp pata!).
Like me, Estrellita also has SWFL roots. Co-owner Hope Webb is a Half Filip from Fort Myers too!! And, as of last week, Estrellita has some serious recognition to go with Hope’s seriously delicious hard work: The fine folks at the prestigious Michelin Guide awarded the restaurant a Bib Gourmand, a designation given to “our best value for money restaurants,” as the Michelin people put it. If ever you’re in or near Atlanta, please check out Estrellita, and please tell Hope I say hi.
Wow , P and L have grown faster than the publishing of Your Book. Waiting patiently for my ordered copy. Can’t wait till the Baby is delivered.😍
This book will grow just as tall and be just as bright as your other babies. Also, TIL audiobook CD's exist!