Author Q&A: Maryann McFadden

By Dr. Mullin

Maryann McFadden is a native of Hackettstown, NJ, and is the author of The Richest Season, published in hardcover by Hyperion Books last year, and now has a second book being released on July 7, So Happy Together.
_______________________________________________________

Dr. Mullin: We're talking about your new book, So Happy Together. What really inspired that story?

McFadden: The first book that I wrote took me about three years to write, so I had plenty of time and it was inspired a little bit by my real estate career. When it was time for me to write the second book, which I had to do in a year, there was a lot of pressure, but I was also feeling a little bit of pressure in my own life – I kind of found myself in the so-called "sandwich generation" all of a sudden. So I decided to take that "sandwich generation" scenario and I applied it to a woman who is in her mid-40s who is a single mother, who has pretty much lived the entire past two decades of her life for her daughter and for her parents. She thinks its finally her turn, but she finds out quickly, as the rug is pulled out from under her, that if you’re a mother or you’re a daughter you’re never really free, you have family demands, and that was the genesis for the idea for the story. It’s a very different story from my own. It follows three generations of women – a mother, a daughter and the grandmother – as they try to find their way back to their earlier dreams, and then realize that the dreams might actually be the things that are holding them back.

Dr. Mullin: Let's move on to your writing career, which I guess is relatively new, right?

McFadden: Well, it is and it isn't. I was a freelance writer through college – I actually worked for the Hackettstown Gazette when I was in college – and when I got out of school I freelanced for ten years for a bunch of newspapers and magazines and did some corporate writing as well. And then I left writing completely when I got into real estate. I was just ready for big change, and it wasn’t until about a decade after I got into real estate – and I was doing really well at it – that I started to miss writing. My kids were leaving the nest and I wanted to write again but I really wanted to do fiction. I ended up getting into a masters program in 1997 at William Patterson – it was a creative writing program – and that’s where the book started. I actually finished my thesis project, which was The Richest Season, part of it, in 1999. 2001 was when I completely finished the book, but it was right before 9/11 so it was really bad timing, and so over the next five years I kept shelving the book. I’d try, but I wasn’t getting anywhere, and in 2006 I gave up and I self-published it, and that’s when I really got the attention of book sellers and newspaper reviewers, and finally landed a really good agent, who sold The Richest Season at auction to a really big New York City publisher, and along with that a contract to write a second book, which is now So Happy Together.

Dr. Mullin: About writing in general, what do you find most enjoyable, and what really attracted you to creative writing?

McFadden: I’ve always been a people person, I love watching people. I think in the same sense that an actor likes playing different roles, I like being different characters. And that’s my favorite part, is creating the characters, taking the idea of a character and bringing it alive, to me that’s the magic. When I started both of my books, the characters in the first draft are not real yet, you’re still creating them, but gradually they take on their own lives, they become real people. I get emails all the time telling me how believable the characters are. Even with the new book, it’s not out yet, but I’m getting emails from reviewers and early readers, and the praise is that these characters are so real and sympathetic, and that’s the thing I absolutely love. I also love playing with words. When I get to a layered draft, which is where I am now with my third book, and you finally get to put the layers on in the writing and start to describe things, play with the words, there is a magic to that too. But I have always loved writing, I have been writing stories since I was a little girl.

Dr. Mullin: What I find particularly interesting, especially with the first book, is what you achieved through self-publishing. A lot of people take the time to do that but end up not achieving the same kind of success. Is there anything different you might have done, something people might not usually think of?

McFadden: Well, it really comes down to two things. A lot of book sellers along the way have said to me that they get handed a ton of self-published books every month, and the majority of them are not well edited, not structured in the right way, and so they’re not really willing to invest the time to read a self published book, because they have so many books they get from big publishers trying to get their own authors – who are big – the notice they need so that those book sellers will order the book. I really worked very, very hard on polishing this book, editing again and again and again, so that I would have a quality piece of writing. When I went to the very first bookseller to ask them to read it and carry it, they agreed and I got a call within a week that they loved the book and they had made it a staff pick. The Richest Season went on to become a book club hit and a staff pick in many stores, and through the year 2006 actually outsold [Khaled Hosseini's] The Kite Runner in several independent book stores, which was phenomenal.

The other part of the equation is having the wherewithal to market the book. I realized when I self-published that my book was really available two places: on Amazon and in the trunk of my car, basically. I needed book sellers if I was going to see success with this book I needed book sellers on board, because I really wanted to build an audience, that was my goal. I felt that if I could build an audience who knew that the book was worthy, maybe I could get myself into a publisher to back the work. With my real estate background I had experience talking to people on this level, and I started calling and selling it to small independent bookstores, because a chain would not carry a self published book. Darrel at the Book Loft in Hackettstown was the first to carry my book, then Clinton Books, Sparta Books, Mendham Books, as well as a bunch of stores down south and some further north began to carry it and recommend it, and the next thing I knew I was meeting with book clubs and doing store signings. I had made bookmarks for the book, I had done email campaigns, and worked very, very hard from May to November 2006 to get the word out as much as I could. And what really helped is that people loved the book. I would get emails from people that were just phenomenal. A woman sent it to her cousin in England for her birthday because she loved it so much – emotional, heartfelt letters. I felt so positive that it was going to happen that by November, when I was, truly, exhausted – I had been working my real job and doing all that – I did an agent search again. I put all my reviews in, I put book seller quotes, reader quotes, and at that point I had sold well over 2,000 copies, which is a lot of books for a self-published book in that amount of time, and I got an agent right away, which was amazing to me. But [all that work] did the trick. I proved that the book was worth it. And that’s the difference. There are people who self-publish really because they have something they may want some people to read but they’re not really looking for a writing career. I was really looking for a writing career, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and I feel very, very blessed that it happened. I have a lot of people who were supporters who I have to thank. I really have a posse of angels, who’ve come on board and spread the word, and it’s been incredible.