I Read Lots of Books, and I Wrote One, Too
So, on occasion, I'll write here about my book, and other books
What this newsletter is all about
My debut novel, Ordinary Devotion, will be published by Monkfish Book Publishers on November 5. I’ll send out newsletters once or twice a month with updates and announcements.
Starting with my next newsletter, I’ll also recommend a book or two I’ve recently read (a novel and/or a poetry collection). And I’ll shout out an independent bookstore, or some other literary sort of place, that I love.
To start off, I figure I should tell you what the heck my book is about. And show you the fabulous cover!
Picture it, England, 1370…
12-year-old Elinor is enclosed with an anchoress,* Lady Adela, in a cell at Wenfair Abbey. Other than occasional visits from one of the monks at the abbey, Elinor has only the intense and mercurial Adela for company—until she becomes aware of the many women who visit the cell at night, whispering through the window when they find themselves unhappily pregnant, and desperate for holy—and practical—help.
Meanwhile, in 2017 in upstate New York…
35-year-old Liz Pace is an adjunct professor of medieval studies at a big public university. She wrote her PhD dissertation on purgatory, but she is fascinated by anchoresses. Liz, pregnant for the first time, is preparing for her presentation at an important academic conference. While there, she’s inspired to take a research trip to England—where she discovers a long-lost medieval book of hours, inscribed with the name Elinor.
*Per Wikipedia, an anchoress is a Christian woman “who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-filled, ascetic life,” and makes “a promise to God to stay in one place, which was a very small room, either attached to, or within the wall of, a local church.”
And here is what it will look like!
Publishers often ask for the author’s preferences and ideas for the book cover design, but the publisher gets final approval. When I worked at W. W. Norton years ago as a managing editor, part of my job was to triangulate among the designer, the marketing department, my boss, and the author to land on a cover everyone could live with. So I knew Monkfish didn’t really have to listen when I told them I wanted something medieval-but-not-too-medieval, and maybe with 1 or 2 woman pictured, and no “ye olde Gothic” typeface (my actual request!), but also nothing too contemporary please…but they did listen to me! Colin Rolfe, the designer at Monkfish, is a wonder.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to share this with anyone else who might like to come along for the ride.
And if you want to preorder (which would be great!) you can do so here, or even better, here. Or just wait and buy it in a good old bookstore!