Tessa Gratton Newsletter #32: My First Great Book
This morning I recorded a podcast about my series the United States of Asgard, with a long-time reader who’s been a fan of valkyrie in general and my The Strange Maid in particular for about a decade. That’s right, I said a decade.
It’s been ten years. Oh my god. I’m so old.
The Lost Sun was my third published novel. It came out in 2013 right after the Penguin-Random House merger and in a lot of ways the whole series was a victim of the intra-house shuffling and editorial changes of that era right at the end of the post-Twilight YA bubble.
The next year, 2014, is when The Strange Maid came out, in June I believe. Which means that this summer will also be the decade anniversary of the start of my, ah, fallow period. The USAsgard series (including the yet-unpublished The Apple Throne) was cancelled by RHCB in July of 2014, and I couldn’t sell anything new for two years.
Because of how upsetting that experience was, after scrambling to indie publish the final novel and a few novellas for the readers who wanted them, I put my USAsgard books aside, and removed the multiple shelves of research and beloved Old English texts from my office. I did my best not to think about them unless I was forced to. They made me feel too raw, to disappointed, to much a failure and fake.
Now here we are. To prepare for the podcast recording, I reread the whole trilogy. It has been ten years since they came out, as established.
The United States of Asgard is a YA alternate universe contemporary fantasy about teenagers living in a USA founded by the Vikings who came to the New World in like 1100 and in this history, they never left. They conquered North America and turned it into their Viking nation, bringing along their very real gods and monsters. It was inspired by my extremely nerdy grad school diversion of learning Old English and translating my own Beowulf instead of writing my thesis…and my horror and anger at the Iraq War, the 2004 election, and all the threads of war culture and bad religion the USA likes to pretend aren’t baked into its foundations. But they’re very fun books, I swear!
I reread The Lost Sun first, early last week, and it was fine. The world is fun, from the magic and politics to the really satisfying trolls, the characters lovable, and the story really holds up. I like a lot about it. But the beginning is unbelievably clunky, there’s weird pacing, and some connective tissue is missing from the romance. The romance! How shocking to me! I mistakenly thought I’ve always nailed romance. WHEW, no. I have not. It reads like something I wrote when I was just beginning to get a hold of myself as a writer. That’s fine! I was just beginning. It could’ve been a lot worse.
Then I reread The Strange Maid.
Natalie asked me how it was going when I had just hit page 44. I remember because I marked the page in order to answer, in a rather horrified and awed whisper, “The first forty-four pages are…flawless.”
Friends, I don’t say this lightly, but ten years later I wouldn’t change a word of The Strange Maid.
It’s a passionate, messy book with several “problematic” elements, and I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea (my worst Kirkus review to date is for this book!). But it’s intricate, wild, with threads of plot and relationship and history that all tie together in the end. Some of my greatest characters, my best poetry.
It’s exactly what I wanted it to be then. Even now, it’s so much itself.
The change in me, in my writing, from The Lost Sun to The Strange Maid is stunning. I’m still kind of staring into the distance about it! How did I do that??? Can I do it again??? I leveled up at least three levels from one book to the next, which makes some sense since I wrote probably 200,000 words of drafts and redrafts before I ended up with the shape of Signy’s story. And I was going through a lot emotionally, what with the breakdown of the publication of The Lost Sun and my own spiritual and political flailing. I was lucky enough to work with a fantastic editor for a brief period of time, who showed me how to rethink a few of my narrative tools. I stopped listening to a very toxic beta reader. I fell obsessively deep into my source material. I didn’t give up and I really dug into my own ambition, my own needs for the story. It was maybe the first time I ignored commercial possibilities on purpose, to tell the story I burned to tell, damn the consequences!
And then… there were consequences. LOL. I wrote The Apple Throne in a state of gentle anxiety as my career caught fire around me. (I remember one morning standing in my MIL’s driveway in Gulfport, MS sticky and staring at the sunrise, having an emotional breakdown because clearly I was the delusional one. Everyone else was right, of course, I am a bad writer. There’s no other possible explanation for why this was happening to me. Or I am a good writer, but that doesn’t matter. As a relatively self-confident, proud, angry, righteous person, this was a shocking emotional reckoning.)
One of the themes of The Strange Maid is about the nature of sacrifice, especially when your religion/faith requires sacrifice but doesn’t always follow through with rewards. Signy comes to realize that when she chooses to sacrifice it needs to be from herself to herself.
The magical thinker in me remembers wondering that awful summer if the sacrificial payment for achieving creative success was my career success. That I’d earned the cancellation in some spiritual deal with a bastard god. At the time, I didn’t want to tell anyone that actually, no, The Apple Throne wouldn’t be published, because I didn’t want to admit I was a failure. All my excitement, my enthusiasm, my delighted rants about American war culture and how we aren’t any more enlightened and certainly not less racist than those old Vikings, about how everything we say is beautiful in the US is ugly, my certainty in my skills and worth were. . .wrong. “It’s like being suddenly, inexplicably left at the altar,” I said when I finally confessed to my family.
One of these days I’ll write more here about the fallow period that followed, those two years I struggled to sell a new project thanks to my bad sales numbers following me everywhere I went, my inability to write a “breakout” book, or reinvent myself in some other way. I wrote the books what would become Strange Grace and The Queens of Innis Lear during this period, the former going through several very huge transformations before hitting on the one that sold. While the latter needed for me to find a way to trust myself again, to love writing for the sake of writing, and the right editor.
The point is, The Strange Maid is my first great book. Maybe my only on so far, it’s impossible to say. Hopefully not the last.
I fought for it, tore myself apart for it, worked and believed, and it still exists, and it’s still everything I wanted it to be then and now, even if it’s not for you. The first time, certainly, that the book I wrote came close enough to the book that lived in my dreams that now I can’t tell any difference at all. Ten years later, it’s the same.
I hope in 2028 when I reread Strange Grace and The Queens of Innis Lear I feel the same way. I hope in 2030 when I read Night Shine I’m relieved. I’m worried of course, because that’s how writers are, and not every book can be great. I’m more worried about Strange Grace to be honest, for a lot of reasons that mostly boil down to fear and internalized transphobia and intrusive thoughts. But in the meantime, I’ve learned to write a book that doesn’t need to be great in the first place—just it’s own, right thing. I spent a small era fighting the good fight on Twitter and pushing publishing toward justice. I’ve started working for Star Wars. I’ve co-written and co-developed in a way that forces me to get out of my own way. There’s been a global pandemic! My mom got really, horribly sick and died. Gay marriage was federalized and my partner of over a decade married me. We bought an acre of land that I cherish every day. I have six more niblings. I’ve tentatively talked about my own fraught gender instead of just pushing theory on everyone like I’m still in grad school. I started writing fanfic again! I think about my projects differently, and I know I need different things from different books and publishing success =/= writing success.
All this has changed, but not The Strange Maid. It’s exactly the same, and I like it that way.
If you want to read this series and don’t have them yet, get them while you can! As of May 31st, I’m taking them down. Scrubbing the internet of all traces!
Then, on the fifteenth anniversary of The Lost Sun in 2028, the United States of Asgard will explode back on the scene, with all-new rebranded glory, and hopefully all-new content. I’d say mark your calendars, but we could all be dead by then!
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT!
I SOLD AN ADULT FANTASY TRILOGY ←-Click the link for all the details!
“Orbit is thrilled to announce we’ve acquired The Mercy Makers, the first book in a new epic political fantasy trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Tessa Gratton! In the vein of Kushiel’s Dart and The Priory of the Orange Tree, this book is a darkly sexy, queer, and complex exploration of the ethics of faith, the nature of empire, and how the interplay between romance and politics can upend the levers of power completely.”
I am sure you’ll get tired of me talking about this book in the next year, so I’ll leave it at this for now: I’ve been thinking about this world since 2013, off and on, and in 2018 I finally felt like my skills might almost be able to keep up with my ambition. I hope I’m right! This whole newsletter has been about how I have no idea if I’m any good or not, lol, but I’m always trying to be great.
DEFY THE STORM IS A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!!!
Thank you to everyone who preordered and bought my most recent Star War, co-written with Justina Ireland. I was very surprised!!!
In good conscience I can’t recommend starting reading The High Republic with Defy the Storm, better to start at the beginning with Light of the Jedi or A Test of Courage OR with phase II Path of Deceit which Justina and I also wrote together. BUT if you make it to Defy and the rest of phase III of the initiative, then you will be very pleased with all the kissing.
PLACES I’LL BE COMING UP:
May 4th, Star Wars Day, at West Wyandotte Kansas City Kansas Public Library! There will also be Stormtroopers, I think? SCARY!
Speaking of my amazing local Lawrence indie bookstore, The Raven, they’ve recently started an initiative for getting queer books into the hands of queer teens.
This project arose in direct response to the violence being perpetrated against our trans*, two-spirit, and queer youth across America. It’s a labor of love from your local trans and queer booksellers (and authors!).
For more information and how to help, visit the Raven website.
If you’ve made it this far, as a treat, here’s the best part of that terrible Kirkus review for The Strange Maid. I’ve added the emphasis myself.
“Gratton’s follow-up to The Lost Sun (2013) is more entertaining and engaging than its predecessor, but the tale’s padded with so many complications it’s easy to put down. There’s such a surfeit of navel-gazing that Signy should be able to map her own spinal column. Fans of the first book and lovers of Norse legend may enjoy, but there’s better for fantasy-adventure lovers.”
OUCH. But that navel-gazing line is poetic enough Ned the Spiritless would really appreciate it.
I have to admit, it still hurts! Even though I just spent an hour writing up for you how much I think the book is my first great book and I wouldn’t change a word. I’m sure there’s a valuable lesson here. Somewhere. Today’s farewell gif is in honor of Kirkus.
As always, thank you for reading.
Tessa
