Post by Livia Llewellyn on Dec 8, 2022 16:17:24 GMT
TLDR version: if something bombs/is ignored when it's first published, be patient. Your people will find you, eventually.
Back in the Before Times, my novella "The One That Comes Before" was part of the four-novella anthology The Daughters of Inanna, edited by Brian Keene (who I will forever be thanking for the contributor invite!) and part of his 2015 Maelstrom Set #6 (along with The Complex and The Cruelty of Autumn). Reception for "The One That Comes Before" was... eh, not exactly good, ha ha. To be fair, it was extremely pulpy and lurid, with big-ass continuity holes and a wafer-thin plot. I wrote it as a bloody, sloppy, fun read, not to be taken seriously. I guess that was wrong? Or maybe just not expected of me? I have no idea.
A few years later, the Italian small press Independent Legions published it as a stand-alone book (English language, and I finally had a chance to correct some of the more glaring errors, although I'll always fondly remember how in the original version my protagonist Alex lost two pairs of shoes in one scene, LOL). It got a few nice reviews on Amazon, but overall, another very muted and disinterested reception. Fair enough: I did my duty and tweeted/Instagrammed/blogged about it, then moved on.
[Edited to add: I forgot to mention that in 2019 I was offered a contract by a Big 5 publisher to rewrite the novella into the first novel of a trilogy, but I queried close to 30 agents and received silence or rejection. The agent who finally agreed to rep me was so spectacularly bad that 1) they were fired from their agency four months after I signed with them, 2) causing me to fire them out of sheer outrage at their fucking incompetence, and 3) lose the deal. I still haven't fully recovered from the massive destruction this caused to my confidence and to my writing.]
This year, Nakladatelství Medusa in the Czech Republic came to me with the request to republish The One That Comes Before as another stand-alone, this time in Czech, with another new cover and a forward by Laird Barron. My expectations were tempered, to say the least, but I was just happy to have another book out in another country - and I figured if Prague could produce a writer like Kafka, then there should be some kind of audience for my squishy Lovecraftian corporate culture creepy-sex murder-fest. Cut to the end of this year:
Back in the Before Times, my novella "The One That Comes Before" was part of the four-novella anthology The Daughters of Inanna, edited by Brian Keene (who I will forever be thanking for the contributor invite!) and part of his 2015 Maelstrom Set #6 (along with The Complex and The Cruelty of Autumn). Reception for "The One That Comes Before" was... eh, not exactly good, ha ha. To be fair, it was extremely pulpy and lurid, with big-ass continuity holes and a wafer-thin plot. I wrote it as a bloody, sloppy, fun read, not to be taken seriously. I guess that was wrong? Or maybe just not expected of me? I have no idea.
A few years later, the Italian small press Independent Legions published it as a stand-alone book (English language, and I finally had a chance to correct some of the more glaring errors, although I'll always fondly remember how in the original version my protagonist Alex lost two pairs of shoes in one scene, LOL). It got a few nice reviews on Amazon, but overall, another very muted and disinterested reception. Fair enough: I did my duty and tweeted/Instagrammed/blogged about it, then moved on.
[Edited to add: I forgot to mention that in 2019 I was offered a contract by a Big 5 publisher to rewrite the novella into the first novel of a trilogy, but I queried close to 30 agents and received silence or rejection. The agent who finally agreed to rep me was so spectacularly bad that 1) they were fired from their agency four months after I signed with them, 2) causing me to fire them out of sheer outrage at their fucking incompetence, and 3) lose the deal. I still haven't fully recovered from the massive destruction this caused to my confidence and to my writing.]
This year, Nakladatelství Medusa in the Czech Republic came to me with the request to republish The One That Comes Before as another stand-alone, this time in Czech, with another new cover and a forward by Laird Barron. My expectations were tempered, to say the least, but I was just happy to have another book out in another country - and I figured if Prague could produce a writer like Kafka, then there should be some kind of audience for my squishy Lovecraftian corporate culture creepy-sex murder-fest. Cut to the end of this year:
- Numerous gloriously gushing reviews on various Czech blogs
- Large interview and reprint of "The Last, Clean, Bright Summer" in Pevnost, their #1 glossy SF/F entertainment mag
- An 2023 photo shoot, story reprint (story TBD), and HUGE interview in cult underground magazine Živel
- A spot on iLiterature.cz's The best books of 2022, which is a kind of magical feat, since the list is typically literary-only. The One That Comes Before is the only horror book to hit this year's list
- An invitation to appear as a guest of Živel at a Czech republic sf/f convention next year (all expenses paid, but due to war + pandemic, this is still very up-in-the-air)