No crying on the yacht, by Catriona

I recently lost 30K of a novel in progress and had to start again. What’s the biggest setback you’ve had in your writing, and how did you overcome it?

[Be there in a bit after I've driven down to give Eric a hug... Okay, I'm back.]

That has never happened to me, but it's like the idea of accidentally grating your knuckles off while zesting a lemon: you don't have to experience it to wince.

I have had some disappointments more than setbacks as such, but they still rankle. Mostly because I can't complain about them. Let me explain.

1. Away back in 2005 when my first novel was coming out, it was chosen to be crime novel of the month for September at Ottakar's (a chain of bookshops in the UK). Woooohoooooo! Then Ottakar's went bust in August.

Links here

Such a crushing disappointment for a baby debut author and the most irritating thing of all was that jobs and livelihoods had been lost and I was the least of the casualties. I couldn't really, in conscience, grumble.

2. Then I started shutting down publishers. First, I sold US rights for my first and second books to Carrol and Graf, a venerable New York publishing house that had been going for decades. They published one book of mine and . . . curtains. Disappointing but not actually painful. Unlike the demise of Midnight Ink. I'm still not over that. Terri Bischoff took on my off-brand psycho-thrillers and put out six of them with fantastic jackets and genius edits, then took on another off-off-brand trilogy of comedies. Except there were only two of them because Midnight Ink, rather suddenly, closed down. It was a huge loss to the mystery landscape and a massive blow to the people who worked there. Again, I was gutted but couldn't whine when so many around me had lost so much more.

How gorgeous is that book?

I felt, for a while, as if I should go into editorial meetings ringing a bell and calling out "unclean, unclean".  I definitely want to reassure Hachette, Severn House and Thomas and Mercer that things go in twos. Right? Right.

3. Then there was the big one. In both senses. Actually, in all three senses: the disappointment was huge; the scale of the event was huger; the amount by which I was so lucky it would have been an outrage for me to moan was hugest. I was honoured beyond words when the local organising committee chairs of Bouchercon Sacramento asked me to be toastmaster. (It can't all have been because I was right there and they wouldn't have to pat an airfare.) My parents were coming; we were going to book a two bedroom suite at the conference hotel; I was going to the gym a lot; I was all set. It was 2020.

Aaaaaaaabsolutely no way was I going to say one single syllable about how it felt for me to be healthy and solvent, at home, doing my job, with everyone I cared for safe and well, even if thousands of miles away and no planes flying. Someone said we were all in the same boat. (I think it was Kate Middleton.) Then someone else said we were all in the same storm but some of us were in luxury liners and some of us were clinging to rafts. (I think that was Prince Harry.) 

Appropriately enough, my biggest disappointments are are all variants of one of my favourite sayings: no crying on the yacht.

Cx