As I go through the penultimate edits on my 51-chapter, soon-to-be-published novel about the journey of a young man recruited for a life he knows nothing about in the pre-Cold War years, I imagine I feel the same emotions that marathon runners do at Mile 25.
Relief. Amazement. Pride. A huge sense of accomplishment.
I'm already planning my marketing campaign--which will involve no social media whatsoever.
Instead, I'm planning to reach key reader demographics like military history fans, Jewish-American history fans, and active and retired Foreign Service workers directly.
That will be my primary focus once this novel gets published (most likely in March/April 2025). I'll be taking a novel-writing break for a few months at least, before I jump into the sequel to this one. You can only run so many marathons back-to-back.
I'll try to better organize my shelves and shelves of printed research--everything from Agency and State memorandums to personal family archives.
Thank god I wrote most of this before the antichrist that is AI came to be--that has been the worst thing to hit the internet in a long time. You now have to wade past 10 sites that want you to buy something--regardless of what you searched. It makes me stabby.
Historical fiction--like spinal fusion--is best undertaken from a stance of complete ignorance of what lays ahead. Both involve 4,000x what you think in terms of effort, time and perseverance.
Through it all, you can never stop believing in your final product--even though it doesn't exist yet. I set aside at least 30,000 words while writing this novel. Plot points that got too far afield. Characters I all but wrote out. If you're going to write a novel, you'd best not fall in love with anything you come up with.
I'm lucky to come from a news editing background that has me trained to cut mercilessly. I set aside culled copy in a separate doc, but the truth is, it will probably never be used anywhere. And that's ok.
Years ago, when I was singing professionally, I made a fancy CD in Burbank. It took a year and was a tremendous accomplishment, but I had an arranger, session players, and cover designers to help me out.
Writing is a solitary pursuit, even though I certainly had an amazing team of editors, consultants and beta readers. But the story line is my own, the characters ditto.
Yes, there are many historical figures in this novel, but you still have to make them human and multidimensional as a novelist. You have to create their conversations, their thoughts, their motivations. Readers need to care about them, or hate them.
This experience rates as one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. And it leaves a legacy of my family's history--in a fictional blanket--forever behind me.
I hope readers are excited by it. It has my soul on its pages.
Miranda Armstadt
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