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I got a stack of galleys of my book in the mail.  A stack!

They are perfect for holding atop one’s head in celebration.  My new chapeau.

Apparently I have written and published a book.

And that thrills/excites/scares/thrills/scares/thrills me.  I guess I wasn’t prepared for the tactile quality of the books (cheap paperbacks, of course, in their galley form, but they’ll come out in hardcover so there are still surprises in store).  I wasn’t prepared to feel like maybe, just maybe, I have something in common with the heroines and authors I spent several wild months with last year.

I also wasn’t prepared to have five whole copies, so get ready for some giveaways….

Whenever I’m asked which heroines The Heroine’s Bookshelf includes, I try to go through the list and inevitably miss one or two authors.  Humiliation!  Shame!  Anyway, a lot of you have asked me who I talk about and in what context, and I figured I’d just tease you with the TOC for good measure:

Introduction
Self: Lizzy Bennet, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Faith: Janie Crawford, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Happiness: Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Dignity: Celie, The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Family Ties: Francie Nolan, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Indulgence: Claudine, The Claudine Novels by Colette
Fight: Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Compassion: Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Simplicity: Laura Ingalls, The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Steadfastness: Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Ambition: Jo March, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Magic: Mary Lenox, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Epilogue & Acknowledgments

One of the most painful parts of writing this book was realizing who I couldn’t include…The Betsy-Tacy books of Maud Hart Lovelace, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Anne Frank, and about 2353252525235 others.  But what a list!

Which chapter are you most excited about?  Which heroines do you wish I’d been able to cover?

I could probably write three books on crappy mothers in literature (not to mention the angelic ones like Caroline Ingalls or Marmee), but a simple blog post will have to suffice as I reflect on a few of literature’s most insufficient, yet appealing, moms.  Who would you add to this  list?

Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With the Wind:  Scarlett is not beautiful, nor is she a good mother at all.  We can barely chasten Rhett Butler for telling her a cat is a better mother than she, for Mrs. Hamilton/Kennedy/Butler extravagantly neglects the sheepish son and the ugly daughter who precede lovely little Bonnie Blue.  (Side note:  Margaret Mitchell’s portrayal of Wade Hampton Hamilton’s reaction to the events of the siege of Atlanta are brilliant and well worth rereading for anyone looking to learn a great lesson about conveying terror, the sweep of historical events, and the plot intricacies of main characters)  Though Scarlett gets punished for her neglectful motherhood in the end, we can’t help but wonder how her own angelic mom’s lessons never managed to wear off on her…and somehow manage to identify with her all the same.

Joan Crawford, Mommie Dearest: Okay, so Joan isn’t exactly a fictional character, though God only knows how fictitious her daughter’s famous tell-all memoir really is.  One fact, however, is abundantly clear:  JOAN CRAWFORD WAS AN EVIL MOTHER.  Attempted stranglings?  Throwing her daughter’s adopted status in her face?  Wire-hangered beatings?  Yeah.  Chalk it up to old Joan, who really knew how to bring the drama to her trainwreck family.

Mrs. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice: Our next selection is not so much a terrible mother as a very…misguided one.  Burdened with the cross of five daughters to marry off, Mrs. Bennet has many pressing worries.  But worse than her bumbling around all matrimonial affairs is a complete disregard of her daughters’ feelings that we have to admit seems excessive, even for the turn of the nineteenth century.  Mrs. Bennet is also…clueless.  “My poor nerves, you tear them to pieces! But I never complain.”

Ingrid Magnussen, White Oleander: Cruelty, neglect, abandonment, and even murder are all on good old Ingrid’s plate at some point, but once again the emotional aspects of the relationship between this anti-heroine and her daughter are of the most interest to me.  It isn’t that Ingrid is evil (she is)…it’s that she is utterly unable to identify with the daughter she gave birth to, and Janet Fitch explores the fallout of a mother’s failure in a pulpy, poignant read.

So…I got my cover yesterday.  *runs around in circles like a crazy woman*  It is PERFECT.  And it is all the more perfect because of its evolution.

Let’s go back to some time last year…my editor asked me if I had any ideas for covers and I faltered.  I told her I LOVE the Penguin Classics series even though the silhouettes aren’t quite representative of the stories within.  She agreed that they’re great and instructed the designer to do girly, with a hint of nostalgia.  The first draft is to your left (click for larger version):

As you can see, the color and aging are TO DIE FOR.  But after talking to my agent, I wondered if it wasn’t a bit too nostalgic.  Part of the point of The Heroine’s Bookshelf is that these books are relevant today, and we worried that it might be skewing a bit to the über-reflective side without meaning to.

Luckily, my editor is a peach.  She not only listened to our reservations, but actively solicited our feedback.

Cue more waiting.  Much more waiting.  I began to dread the worst (though no news apparently is good news…)  And then, yesterday, this arrived in my inbox (lower right; click for swoonworthy detail):

Is it not just to die for?  I love the fact that it’s girly without a trace of pink…that the linen texture evokes nostalgia while somehow seeming fresh in its contemporary silhouette frame.  I love the colors and how they’ll pop off the shelf.  I LOVE IT.  My agent immediately wrote and asked if I liked it…I wrote back “I am sitting here clapping my hands and crying.  So…yes.”

It’s so interesting to see the ways in which the second cover retained some of the feel of the original one, including the blue and nostalgic detail, while coming completely into the now.

I’ve imagined how my name would look on the cover of my first book since I was old enough to read…now thanks to my extremely able and efficient team at Harper and to the extremely talented Christine Van Bree, my wildest dreams have been satisfied and surpassed.  After hearing so many horror stories of writers whose covers have felt like a violation or a messy afterthought, I feel doubly blessed…and I hope my readers will like it as much as I do.

(Not to be confused with Sweatin’ to the Oldies!)  I’m in Writing Mode, which for my long-suffering boyfriend means having to deal with someone who is clumsier, more preoccupied, and spacier than ever.  But spewing out the world’s most terrible first draft isn’t always (or ever) a cakewalk, and I have reason to call upon “my heroines” for moral support on the way.  Bear with me as I give myself a pep talk and point to five ways my literary heroines, both fictional and real-life, motivate my writing:

• Writing as fun:  Who can forget the image of Jo March scribbling in her attic, cap on head, pillow at the ready, rats scurrying all around?  Though I know that Louisa May Alcott’s experience of the writing “vortex” was a bit more painful, her character’s no-holds-barred approach to writing reminds me to have some fun with the process.  After all, what other profession includes dreaming, crying, even eavesdropping in its description?
• Writing as salvation:  The story of the Brontës is all I need to remember that I am lucky to have the outlet of writing.  I may not pace around a table at Haworth, but like Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, I try to pour my relief and anxiety into my work.  It helps.
• Writing as rebellion:  She may have written a century ago, but I still consider Colette to be the ultimate literary rebel (and writing about her literary declaration of independence was one of the highlights of The Heroine’s Bookshelf).  Sometimes I find myself continuing work just to prove to myself that I can…that I have something to say, after all.  And I usually do.
• Writing as legacy:  I recently treated myself both to Francine Prose’s excellent new Anne Frank book and the Revised Critical Edition of Anne’s timeless diary.  I didn’t get a chance to include Anne in my book, but I am touched by her awareness that her legacy in the world was a written one.  I won’t ever presume to be an Anne, but thoughts of a literary legacy of some kind are a nice reminder when the going gets tough (and a push to revise the hell out of my terrible first drafts so that nobody reads them when I’m gone!).
• Writing as reading:  As an unabashed bookworm, I can say that there’s nothing so tantalizing as the thought of showing my work to others, no matter how painful that process might be.  The wit, spunk, and sass of my favorite heroines reminds me that I can’t have readers unless I write.  Talk about motivation!