Not only will The Middlesteins be published in Taiwan, but yesterday my agent confirmed that Serpent’s Tail will be publishing the book in the UK next spring. Hannah Westland, my new favorite person in all of England, will be the editor on it.
OK, can we talk about this for a second?
Like, I’m not even going to front here, and act like this is a thing that happens to me all the time. I have friends who are famous all over the world and have bookshelves full of their foreign editions and it’s no big thing to them anymore. Well, I refuse to act appropriately cool. I’m so damn excited about this.
Also I remember a year ago – actually a year ago today! – reading this great Lionel Shriver piece about her struggles with We Need To Talk About Kevin, and how the book was rejected by thirty publishers before Serpent’s Tail accepted it. Of course, it has had tremendous success since. “The Little Publisher That Could,” she called them. I read that piece and thought: There’s always hope if the book is good and it finds the right editor.
So I am truly energized today. For my little book to go all the way over there and land in the hands of people who love literature so much. What an opportunity. I’d like to think that I’ll come back down to earth again tomorrow. But I hope not. I’d just like to feel this way a little bit longer.
