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Terror stalks the nightmare realms of Ravenloft. No one knows this better than monster scholar Rudolph Van Richten.
To arm a new generation against the creatures of the night, Van Richten has compiled his correspondence and case files into this tome of eerie tales and chilling truths. The first thing I tell debut authors is this: Assume nothing. If just one person had sat me down when I signed my first book contract and explained how publishing works, how nothing is guaranteed, and how it often feels like playing Russian Roulette with words, I would have made much sounder financial and creative decisions.
I would have set a foundation for a healthy life as an artist, laying the groundwork to thrive in uncertainty, to avoid desperation, panic, and bad decisions that would affect me for years to come. What pain could I have avoided if they had advised me not to spend that money as though there would be more where that came from?
I suspect I may have avoided a near nervous breakdown and not come so perilously close to financial ruin and creative burnout. But no one came forward. Let me back up. Now, I want to acknowledge the inherent privilege that I hold as a white, educated, middle-class American. They are good problems. Lucky, even. I had a leg up, even when it felt like I was in the trenches.
Access equals privilege, and I understand that. Revising is my favorite part of the writing process, and clearly a big part of my personal life. In fact I wish I could go back and revise the past six years. Not for this one book deal. Otherwise, I reasoned, they would never have paid me such enormous sums. These publishers must be investing in me for the long run. I was one of their own. It had happened twice in a row, these six-figures: Surely I had somehow become one of the chosen few.
Surely there were writers who had gotten the memo about how advances worked, and the ins and outs of publishing. What came after was beside the point. Someone has to be on the bestseller list, win the National Book Award, have the big movie deal.
Did anyone working with me — agency, publishing team — tell me that a sumptuous advance was not something I should depend on or get used to? Did anyone in the publishing house take me under their wing and explain to me how the company made decisions about future book deals? Did the publisher tap a more seasoned author on their list to mentor me, as many major corporations encourage within their companies? Did the MFA in writing program that I was part of, in any way, arm me with the knowledge to protect and advocate for myself in the publishing world?
I donated large sums of money to organizations I cared about, and delighted in the feeling that I was making a real difference. Did I pay off my student loans? No, though I made a few large payments. Did I set money aside for retirement? Right now, I had to suck the marrow out of life — and invest heavily in trying to build my author brand.
And no one said I should be buying fancy cocktails. That was all my choice, a combination of an almost manic pursuit of joie de vivre Fitzgerald would understand! I figured they had cracked the code — swag, website — and I just needed to follow suit.
Despite making some poor choices, I did try very hard to do right by this unexpected reversal of fortunes. The school where my husband taught had a financial planner that offered services to teachers, so we met with him and his partner, but it was obvious they only wanted to sell us life insurance.
Our tax guy told us what to write off, but we had no idea what we were doing. No writer I knew had someone they trusted for financial advice, and our unconventional earnings made getting clear advice very difficult. I lived in Brooklyn, a borough of one of the most expensive cities in the world. While I was buoyed by the very small, very occasional foreign book deal, this was it until there were more books in the pipeline. What could I have done differently?
I could have opted to move to a city that was less expensive, certainly. I could have chosen not to quit my day job, but it would have been tough. I had five books under contract at once, plus the enormous task of building and maintaining an author brand.
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