Elizabeth Gonzalez James On Being Rejected... By Pretty Much Everyone

If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.

Today’s guest for the SHIT is Elizabeth Gonzalez James, author of Mona At Sea. Before becoming a writer Elizabeth was a waitress, a pollster, an Avon lady, and an opera singer. Her short story, Cosmic Blues, was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s 2016 Short Story Award for New Writers, and her stories and essays have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She’s an alum of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Tin House Writers Workshop, and Lit Camp. She is a regular contributor to Ploughshares Blog. Her first novel, MONA AT SEA, was a finalist in the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards judged by Carmen Maria Machado, and is forthcoming, June 2021, from Santa Fe Writers Project. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Oakland, California. 

How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?

I should give a little bit of background info first: I went on submission with my novel in 2015 and it was turned down everywhere – something like 40 editors. We got close at a few places but, for one reason or another, things fell through. In 2016 my agent emailed to say that she had run out of places to submit the manuscript, and I was obviously crushed. I put the manuscript in a drawer, occasionally sending it out here and there to small presses. In 2019 I submitted it on a whim to the SFWP Literary Awards, thinking I might get an honorable mention or something. To my utter shock I was named a finalist, and was offered a publishing contract. So my period of submission was 4 years and my path to publication was anything but easy or straight.

Before I went on submission I’d read a few blogs on what to expect, and they all said that I would need to be patient and that I should start working on the next book right away, so I did just that. What I did not know was how common it is for books to fail to find a publisher. And I had no idea my book would take so long to find a publisher. Probably a good thing or I might have quit! 

Did anything about the process surprise you?

Mona at Sea is a dark comedy about an acerbic and troubled young woman. A lot of the feedback my agent and I got from editors back in 2015 was that they didn’t know how to market the book. I was surprised by that, both because I felt like there should be space in literature for a character like Mona, but also because I didn’t realize how much hinged on a book’s marketability. I had wanted to believe that a great story was enough, and perhaps it still is sometimes, but publishing is a business and publishers have to understand how to sell your book. Since 2015 however, I think a lot has changed. Fleabag, which features a similar character to mine, was enormously popular, and I think the public is more receptive now to stories about fierce, funny young women. 

Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?

Yeah I did some Googling. I don’t think it particularly helped, though. I think all it did was allow me to have the illusion that I was doing something productive and somehow helping further my book’s chances in the world.

What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors?

It was all over the place. Some editors got back in a few weeks while others held onto the MS for months, being noncommittal. Small press editors were all over the map, too. There were some presses that got back to me in a few months and others that never got back to me ever.

What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety? 

It’s hard because of course all you want to do is obsess about it. The only thing you can do, though, is try to keep yourself occupied. Start your next book. Write short stories. Mentor someone. Volunteer. Try to keep your wine and Cheeto consumption to the bare minimum. I started writing essays and short stories and submitting them, and that was great because I was learning how to do different kinds of writing while also feeling out the market for submitting shorter pieces, which is a whole other kind of submissions hell! 

If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?

Oy vey, all I had were rejections! Fortunately my agent didn’t tell me about every single one, so I only heard about them in batches, or when an editor had complimentary feedback. I definitely cried, and I felt really bad about myself and my writing. When my agent said we’d come to the end of the road I went out to a bar with my husband and got drunk and ate a bunch of candy and threw myself a big pity party. But you know what? Never at any point did I consider giving up. I told myself that I’d gotten so close with my first book, my very first try, and that it would be foolish not to try again. So I wrote a second book, and meanwhile I kept sending out Mona at Sea. Eventually I got to a place where the rejections didn’t hurt as much. Your biggest fear when you’re on submission is that no one will pick up your book. Well, that happened to me. I fell flat on my face. And I didn’t die. The sun still came up the next morning. And I’m actually thankful for the experience because I now know that I can handle rejection. I’m strong enough to handle anything.  

If you got feedback on a rejection, how did you process it? How do you compare processing an editor’s feedback as compared to a beta reader’s?

I did get feedback from one editor who we thought was going to make an offer on the MS. She wanted some things changed and so I went back and made all the changes she wanted, and then her publishing house re-orged and no longer offered literary fiction. The stakes are higher when an editor gives you feedback, because all day long they’re sitting at their desk making manuscripts better. The criticisms cut deeper and the praise lifts you up higher.  

When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal? 

I got an email from my publisher, just a couple of lines, that he loved my book, and was it still available. I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was a scam. I thought no way did this guy want to publish my book. At that point I’d talked myself into rewriting the entire novel from scratch, and so I actually put him off for a few months and had to slowly, slowly talk myself into signing a contract with him. So the YES! wasn’t like a fist pump in the air, but more like a room slowly filling with beautiful perfume.

Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?

Yes, I had to wait a while to publicly announce it, though I was grateful to have a little time. I was filled with utter terror after signing my contract, and so I wasn’t chomping at the bit to blast it on social media. I came around eventually though and the response I got from my writing friends on social media was very sweet and welcoming. I’m very grateful for all the kinship I‘ve found online.

Hope Adams On The Bonds of Female Friendship & Cooperative Creativity

In 2009, Hope Adams visited the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and came upon The Rajah Quilt, which she learned was stitched by female convicts in 1841 aboard a transcontinental voyage via the Rajah. This ship transported thousands of women, convicted of petty crimes, from London to van Diemen’s Land (modern day Tasmania) in the 1840s. On this 1841 trip, a group on board under the guidance of chaperone Keziah Hayter, who taught the women needle-working skills, formed the tapestry. The quilt now hangs in the Museum of Australia, in Canberra. Fascinated by this quilt, Adams imagined the desperate lives of these female prisoners—including the crimes they committed and why—and the result is this stunning novel.

Your novel, DANGEROUS WOMEN, was inspired by the Rajah quilt, which was stitched by female convicts during their transcontinental voyage. When dealing with the historical account, women are often sidelined and details can be sparse. How did you go about researching for this book, and are your characters based on real convicts? 

There is an awful lot we know about the real convicts on this trip. Online, you can access the records that the Captain and the Surgeon Superintendent kept. Kezia Hayter kept a diary. The scene where the women are asked their details must be true because we have their heights, eye and hair colours and details of their crimes, all written down.  And we have every name too, but I decided to NOT use the names of anyone who actually sailed on the Rajah. It gave me greater freedom to do what I wanted and to put the characters I’d created on to that ship. I also didn’t use the real names because there are people living in Australia and especially Tasmania who are descended from these convicts.

Female friendships and fast connections play a large role in the story. These women have all been forced together by chance and shadowy pasts, yet they manage to form bonds as they would in any other situation. Do you think there is something innately female about these bonds? 

I do think that girls in general find it easier to chat and find out about one another and find things in common than boys do. There’s an experiment where doctors looked at 2 nine-year-old girls in a doctor’s waiting room and 2 nine-year-old boys in the same waiting room. The children had no idea they were being looked at. The girls asked one another questions from the get go. ‘Where do you live? Do you have brothers or sisters? “etc. Within minutes they were chatting away and ignoring all the toys left out for them in the waiting room. The two boys did not exchange a word. They just approached the Lego and began building something together…

I read something in the newspaper the other day which said that women were coping much better in lockdown, Zooming and chatting with their friends on Whats App etc whereas men tended to chat and bond mainly in bars etc and felt the lack of them hugely while they are shut. Women find it easier to natter, I think. Hope it’s not sexist in any way to suggest such a thing. They also find it easier to keep up a connection once they’ve made it. 

DANGEROUS WOMEN is very much a closed room mystery. Everyone is trapped, and no one is safe on board the ship. With that in mind, how much did you have to learn about ships and sailing in order to deliver this tale?

I did the bare minimum. I went to look around a very famous Clipper ship in London called the Cutty Sark and for the rest, I relied on accounts on the internet. I did have help from the Royal Maritime Museum at Greenwich about portholes…. there were windows on board ship in those days. I’m not very good at research…would much rather be making up things than looking into them.

The characters on board the ship have mostly been convicted of petty crimes--some even committed as acts of desperation to escape violent husbands. Why did you choose the title DANGEROUS WOMEN? 

The book went through lots of titles. For quite a long while it was going to be called CONVICTION. I never liked that title because Denise Mina, the Scottish crime writer, had a book by that name which appeared in 2020. My wonderful US editor, Amanda Bergeron, came up with Dangerous Women and we all latched on to that most gratefully. For a while, the name of the book in my mind was THE WORK OF THEIR HANDS which has now become part of the dedication. 

What do you hope readers can take away from this historical tale, and what elements still apply in today's world?

I hope readers will enjoy this book on two levels. First, as a hopefully exciting mystery story with a really involving puzzle they can solve along with Kezia and the others.  I hope they’ll also see how important it is for everyone to realize that working together brings unexpected and sometimes extraordinary benefits. I think that cooperative work, and people doing something creative together (putting on a play, making a movie, or a podcast, or anything really…) yields amazing results which we often can’t achieve on our own.  I am also a firm believer in the message of George Herbert’s hymn Teach me my God and King  and I urge readers to find it online and read the whole thing. It’s the most beautiful poem. The message is: any work however humble is elevated if we do it for the right reasons…. not necessarily for the greater glory of God but to further the common good in some way.

Finola Austin on Stalking Dead People

by Finola Austin

It’s no secret that my generation—the much maligned millennials—is one made up of adept internet stalkers. Information about a new friend, a colleague, or that hot guy from a dating app is always just a Google search away, especially if the subject of your stalking has an unusual name, as I do. However, as a writer of historical fiction, I have to confess that, on an average Saturday night you’re much more likely to find me stalking...well, dead people. 

In Fall 2016, I came across the woman, Lydia Robinson, who would become the protagonist of my debut novel, the old-fashioned way—in a book. I’m a long-time lover of all things nineteenth-century; in fact, I have a Master’s in Victorian literature, and the Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne) have always been among my favorite writers of the period. I was reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte, the first Bronte biography, when I stumbled upon her paragraphs about Lydia, the older woman rumored to have had an affair with Branwell, the dissolute Bronte brother. Gaskell described her as “wretched” and as “tempting [Branwell] into the deep disgrace of a deadly crime.” She even blamed Lydia for Branwell’s death and those of two of his three sisters! Somebody, I thought, has to have written a novel from this woman’s perspective. So what was the first thing I did? Reader, I Googled it. 

I discovered that, while the ill-fated affair was mentioned in other works inspired by the Brontes, no one had thought to put Lydia and her perspective at the center of a novel. So began a year of intense (largely digital) research, as I stalked Lydia within an inch of her life—that is, I would have, had she still been living!

So how did I go about it? First, I read whatever I could find on the internet, sourced and unsourced, reliable and less so, about Lydia Robinson and the Branwell Bronte affair. I took notes on everything, especially when accounts differed (e.g. was Lydia’s second husband much older than her as many blogs claimed, or was in fact her peer?). 

At the same time, I consulted Bronte biographies—the compendious and scholarly, like Juliet Barker’s The Brontes, which had great endnotes pointing me to primary sources, and the older biographies, such as Daphne du Maurier’s book on Branwell, which did not cite sources and felt in some ways closer to historical fiction. I also searched JSTOR for all journal articles that touched on the affair, and asked an academic friend to send me countless PDFs. 

Digitized census records were another window into the world Lydia inhabited. Who were her servants and her neighbors? Where did her family live? Who were her friends? Using sites designed for family historians, and leaning on my mother, a family tree enthusiast, for support, I built up a sprawling web of knowledge that went far beyond what Bronte scholars had focused on. (Lydia’s second husband was her age FYI.)  

As luck would have it, a Yorkshire carpenter, George Whitehead, who lived near Lydia and her family, had kept four diaries (of births, deaths, marriages, and sundries) recording events in the local area. These had been published locally in the 1990s, but, thanks to the wonders of Amazon, a secondhand copy was soon winging its way to me in New York. I remember sitting in a Manhattan tapas bar, feverishly recording gems from this book, between mouthfuls of calamari. Bronte academics had mentioned rumors of a gardener uncovering the illicit affair, but now I knew who this gardener was, his name, how many children he had, where and when he died.

I could have stalked my growing collection of dead people forever, but I limited myself to a year of research. Then I had to start writing. And it was a joy! Part of the novel felt written for me, because of the spreadsheet of dates and details I’d compiled. I drafted the novel that became Bronte’s Mistress in under six months, before flying to England to do some more research on the ground. 

There, I visited archives, graveyards, and the grounds of Lydia’s old house (sadly destroyed, though the building where Branwell slept is now a private home). And every step of the way, I was aided by my digital preparations. I’d emailed the local vicar, who introduced me to amateur historians, and the school, which now stood on the site of Lydia’s home, in order to win admittance. I’d emailed the Bronte Parsonage Museum so I could look at the Robinson Papers, which included eighteen letters penned by my protagonist—Lydia herself. 

The internet is often thought of as being very much of the “now,” but my digital literacy, learned from years of watching silly cat videos, sharing memes, and, yes, stalking with abandon, has been my window to the past. Digitization of records is the best thing that’s ever happened to historical fiction, and, as I know from the book I’m working on next, there are so many gems of stories out there, just waiting to be found.

Finola Austin, also known as the Secret Victorianist on her award-winning blog, is an England-born, Northern Ireland-raised, Brooklyn-based historical novelist and lover of the 19th century. Her first novel, Bronte’s Mistress, was published in 2020. By day, she works in digital advertising. Find her online at www.finolaaustin.com.