Today we have a very special guest! Emily Henry, author of THE LOVE THAT SPLIT THE WORLD is here to talk to us about her journey to publication.
Guys, I'm reading this book right now, and it is SO GOOD! The way Emily writes is just incredibly gorgeous and compelling. I'm loving it and can't wait to see how the rest of the story unfolds. I already know it's going to be a favorite for the year. It comes out January 26th, so make sure you add it to your TBR now!
What was the journey to publication like for you and your book?
My (and The Love That Split the World’s) journey to publication was such a strange and surprising whirlwind! A few months before I wrote the book, my lovely agent and I had—after months of revision—begun to shop a different book to editors. It was the book she’d signed me for and a the time I had essentially no publishing credits and no connections within the world of publishing, so I was mostly unsurprised by the slow response times we were getting. The book rode the paranormal-line, and most of the passes we were getting referenced an overcrowded market. Sometimes, I suspect, this was just the easiest and most polite way to pass on the book, but in a few rare cases we got rejections that were so effusive and lovely that they actually warmed my heart instead of stinging.
The main piece of advice you’ll get from other writers about being “on submission” with editors is to throw yourself into a new project, to keep yourself from refreshing your Inbox every few seconds—sometimes it can even take over a year for a book to sell—so I was doing my best to keep writing even though my brain was caught in a constant hamster wheel of “Is someone reading my book right now? Are they hating it? Are they loving it? Are they pushing it to the bottom of the stack because it sounds so incredibly boring to them?
So in the midst of this I wrote exactly the kind of book you’d expect a person with a completely frazzled brain to write: a bad one. But by the time I’d finished it, realized it was bad, and set it aside, I’d finally gotten used to living in that constant state of “anything could happen” and writing began to sound exciting and magical again. The idea for TLTSTW hit me so hard and thoroughly that I was actually afraid to write it—I had all these big ideas and feelings I wanted to touch on and I was scared that starting the project would mean messing it up. But finally I couldn’t take it any longer and I gave in to the urge to write. I think it took me somewhere between a month and two to write the first draft and, while I knew it had its problems, I actually felt confident enough in the book, and eager enough to share it, that I sent that first draft to my agent.
She read it over the weekend, live-messaging me her reactions, and I think we got it cleaned up in another two weeks or so. We both decided this book made more sense as my debut, and we pulled the other one from submission before we could go to a second round of editors. We wanted to get THE LOVE into the hands of a select few authors who’d responded positively to the earlier book while my writing was fresh in their minds.
While there were a few editors my agent and I both had warm-fuzzies about, there was one in particular we were super-crossing our fingers for. We would email back and forth, and just be like, “Ugh, I hope it’s Liz. I really want it to be Liz!”
Things moved much more quickly this time. I think it was only two or three weeks before we had an offer—from Liz, at Razorbill/Penguin. When I got my first edit letter (which was massive) for the book, I think I cried just from feeling like my book was understood exactly as I’d hoped it would be. Her ideas and suggestions were so perfect, and the connections she drew further affirmed how perfect her viewpoint was for molding the book into shape. I couldn’t have asked for a better editor or human being to partner with on TLTSTW. I really feel like everything happened exactly as it needed to to bring this book to life.
by Emily Henry
Age Range: 12 and up
Grade Level: 7 and up
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Razorbill (January 26, 2016)
Goodreads | Amazon
Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken.
Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start…until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.
That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.
|
The Young Folks
|
1/18 - Interview
| |
|
Reading Teen
|
1/19 - Guest post 1
| |
|
It Starts at Midnight
|
1/20 - Top 10 list
| |
|
The Hollow Cupboards
|
1/21 - Book soundtrack
| |
|
Owl Always Be Reading
|
1/22 - Review & giveaway
| |
|
Fiction Fare
|
1/25 - Guest post 2
| |
|
Buttermybooks
|
1/26 - Interview
| |
|
The Hardcover Lover
|
1/27 - 25 Random Things About Me
| |
|
Effortlessly Reading
|
1/28 - Interview
| |
|
A Midsummer Night's Read
|
1/29 - Review & giveaway
| |
|
The Forest of Words and Pages
|
2/1 – Character playlist
| |
|
Love is not a triangle
|
2/2 - Would You Rather?
| |
|
The Book Addict's Guide
|
2/3 - Character playlist 2
| |
|
Once Upon a Twilight
|
2/4 - Dreamcasting post
| |
|
MuggleNet
|
2/5 - Review & giveaway
|
Comments
Post a Comment
Leave us a comment. Commenting people are our favorites! And we like to give things to favorites :)