A Two-Book Deal & Lessons Learned

An official announcement has been made! An announcement about something I’ve been sitting on for a while. This sums up my literary life: a perpetual sitting on good news, waiting for the time I can “officially” announce its hatching. (I’m not complaining! But think about how uncomfortable it is for the good news, to be sat on for prolonged periods like that!)

And the good news? Here it is, at the top of a weekly roundup for book deals in Publishers Weekly. With a photo of me and everything!

And because I’m vain, here’s another screenshot from the Publishers Weekly newsletter that reports on global rights. It’s the Deal of the Week!

A non-writer friend pointed out how confusing the language is to someone outside the industry. So I’ll translate: the publisher HarperVia has bought two novels from me. Alexa Frank is the editor at HarperVia who made the acquisition. Jayapriya Vasudevan is my agent, but she worked with a US agent – “a co-agent” – Daniel Lazar to make the sale. That’s the gist, basically. Apart from the fact that…MY NEXT NOVEL IS COMING OUT IN 2026 (which is actually called But Won’t I Miss Me. Spot the typo in the announcement text. But you know what? I don’t mind!)

Though it doesn’t feel like it, it has been a long time since I’ve had a novel of my own come out! And milestones are as good a time as any to reflect on lessons learned.

1. Time Moves Fast. It really does. It feels like only yesterday when my last published novel came out, first as Under Your Wings in Australia in 2018, then as The Majesties in the US and UK in 2020. 2020 shouldn’t seem like such a long time ago, but on the publishing treadmill it’s already considered “old,” from the Covid era, which is fast receding into the distance too. Imagine that.
   
   Funnily enough, it’s not as if I lounged around eating bon-bons after Under Your Wings/The Majesties came out. Apart from being busy raising two tiny children and being depressed, and dealing with all the craziness of the Covid times like everyone else, I translated three books and wrote the manuscript of the third instalment of my Oddfits trilogy (which continues its search for a new home). I came up with the idea for this forthcoming novel But Won’t I Miss Me in early 2019. And felt I didn’t have the time to sit down and write it until the end of 2022, when the Copyright Agency gave me a Create Grant to do so!
   
   Does this mean I should have done something differently? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I could have written But Won’t I Miss Me sooner anyway. It took years to digest the experience and gain enough distance from its subject matter – the trauma of early motherhood – for me to write it well. But it does make me realize the importance of not comparing, despite the pressure to do so. It’s easy to look at other writers who are producing a book a year, a book every two years, and feel slow and incompetent by comparison. Some people are fast writers. Some people have more time to devote solely to writing. And some people don’t! It’s okay to go steadily at your own pace.
   
   Having said that, since this is a two-book deal, I do have to prioritize writing that next novel!
   
   
2. Celebrate every win. Every win. Including announcements. There was a time when I would always be waiting for the “official” good thing to happen. And over time, I realized that the “official” time never came. After I’d sign a contract or a book announcement would happen, I’d think, well, but I’ll wait till the book comes out to really celebrate. And then once the book came out, I would think, well, I’ll wait for the reviews to be really good, or for it to get an award. No, no, no. Best to take the wins you have and recognize them for what they are: WINS.
   
   I’m SO excited about this two-book deal, and SO excited about But Won’t I Miss Me coming out in 2026!
   
   
3. It takes a village to make a book deal. Or at least a small group of excellent people. A heartfelt thank you to Jacaranda Literary Agency and Jayapriya Vasudevan and Helen Mangham there for always championing and supporting my work. Thank you to our US co-agent, Daniel Lazar, (to whom credit goes for getting a US publisher for The Majesties as well)! Thank you so much to Alexa Frank, editor and fellow literary translator and wordsmith, for acquiring But Won’t I Miss Me and Yet-Unnamed-Next-Book! I’m so excited to be working with her!
   
   There are many others who deserve thank yous, and they’ll appear in the acknowledgements for the books. If I sound like I won an Emmy or something, it’s because, yeah, well, I’m celebrating every win! 😉