Chapter 41 Erin
Erin
A week later, God must have answered Dad’s prayers because he came up with a real answer: ‘Come home and start your own publishing company here in Boston. I’ll help to set you up, financially.
’ I knew enough agents and had good relationships with them.
Most of them also represented fiction writers.
I called up my old room-mate, Carla Rivera, from my Harvard days.
She was also struggling in New York, trying to pay rent in the Bronx as a marketing assistant for one of the big advertising companies.
I put together a proposal for her. She was a Boston girl too, and she was fed up.
I knew I could do the editing, but I needed somebody to do publicity, and she had all the contacts from her time in advertising.
She knew features editors and some book editors, but she also had contacts for all the major TV shows who might want to interview a writer.
Before I handed in my notice to Schoolroom, I had some lunches on their expense account.
I figured it was the least they owed me.
I knew that New York was the centre of the publishing world, but it didn’t have to be.
I registered with the latest edition of Writer’s Market and placed targeted ads in writers’ groups on the internet.
I knew I would eventually need a broad spectrum of books, so I appealed for submissions in fantasy, dystopian, speculative, horror, crime, romance, children’s and science fiction categories.
I went for the most commercial genres and the ones in which I had a particular interest. I needed Dad’s money to pay advances and cover the exorbitant rent on an office in Cambridge.
The one thing I had learned from my time in New York publishing was that appearances mattered, and Cambridge was a good address.
My first publication had to be a great one, and Carla and I trawled through submissions day and night for weeks.
I trusted her taste and she trusted mine.
The first review from the Boston Globe hurt me so much that I can’t imagine how Esha felt. We wept together and I tried to reassure her and myself that it was just one review.
It is hard to care about these characters and their small lives. It might be more interesting if they had aspirational careers. I doubt that any reader is going to care about a maid and a school caretaker.
The critic could not have been more wrong and, to our delight, I had to order a second print run of 10,000 within two weeks and then 20,000 the following week.
Sweet Subway went viral across social media, and it became THE book that everyone was talking about.
Esha was invited on to Good Morning America and was interviewed by The New York Times.
Suddenly the top agents were sending me manuscripts.
My next two acquisitions were children’s books, one about a girl pirate and the other a coming-of-age story about a neurodivergent teen.
Both books took off and I was finally established.
At the beginning of our second year, I hired an assistant, Ruth, and a copy-editor, Suzie, and found a bigger office.
I also needed to see a therapist because even though my professional life couldn’t have been better, my love life was non-existent.
I didn’t trust men. That was when the texts started again.
I could destroy your business. You should have stayed away.
Why was Margie starting this game again? Milo would be released within months. What could she possibly have to gain?