This will be the official announcement in tomorrow's Publishers Marketplace:
Making Piece: A Memoir about Love, Loss and Pie by Beth M. Howard, the author’s story of how pie helped her heal after losing her 43-year-old husband by traveling in an RV in search of pie stories, and ultimately arriving at the American Gothic House where she now lives and bakes pie, in a pre-empt to Ann Leslie Tuttle of Harlequin Nonfiction by Deidre Knight of The Knight Agency (World English) in a very nice deal.
I should be ecstatic, I know. And a huge part of me is. But it is not lost on me that a) it took Marcus' death for me to have a story compelling enough to interest a publisher (or a subject bone-crushingly tragic enough to force my writing to go deeper), and b) I still have to finish writing the manuscript. (So far I'm one-third of the way done.)
Oh, I WILL celebrate. Trust me on that. But I'm superstitious and prudent enough to delay the celebration and champagne until I have the entire book written. Which, hopefully, will be no more than two months from now. Provided I keep my (growing) butt in the chair.
Cover art for my book? The title of Molly Moser's painting, "Make Piece," inspired the name of my memoir |
Writing this particular book is no exception. Okay, maybe I'm not loving writing the parts about Marcus dying.
But even with this difficult subject matter, I find myself transported when I get immersed in a long writing session. (Funny, making pie has the same effect on me.) In fact, today I was in the middle of writing about driving the RV to LA (December 2009) when my phone rang. I had a two o'clock conference call with my agent (the phenomenal Deidre Knight) and my new editor (the gracious and enthusiastic Ann Leslie Tuttle at Harlequin Non-Fiction). Normally, I would have been watching the clock in anticipation of the call, but I was so absorbed in my writing, the phone startled me when it rang. Not only had I lost track of the time, I didn't even realize I was in Iowa. As far as I knew, I had just arrived in Santa Monica and was about to park the RV. I was admiring the blue California sky, the magenta-colored bougainvillea, and inhaling the sagebrush-scented air. It took me a few minutes to remember that I was not actually in Los Angeles, and instead was sitting in the American Gothic House kitchen. I love it when that happens.
I am so grateful that writing is my profession, that I can afford to call myself a full-time writer (and part-time pie baker), that I live in a place so peaceful and grounding that my thoughts crystallize and pour out onto the page. I am grateful that I have a team of people in the book publishing world who think I have something meaningful enough to say that they're investing their time, money, paper and ink in me.
I wrote the first page of "Making Piece: A Memoir about Love, Loss and Pie" last June and posted it on my blog. Here it is if you missed it. I didn't write another word until January 2 (ya gotta love it when those New Year's Resolutions pay off). But now, the words are coming faster, more urgently. I take it as a sign of progress, of healing, of my increasing ability -- as the title suggests -- of making peace with losing Marcus.
I hope you'll buy a copy -- or two. But you'll have to wait until June of 2012, which, coincidentally, is the same month I turn 50. Seeing my first book in print will be the ultimate birthday to myself. Now that will be something to celebrate.