Yeah, there's some deja vu here: I've created something that I'm very proud of, then asked myself - now what? Frankly, as a professional playwright for over two decades, I have never known when, where or even if my plays would find a home. It is, quite simply, the writer's gamble. We write because we love the act of writing; the creating; the artistry that it requires; the catharsis. But then there are the components of the business that an artist can never fully control - the business part. As a playwright, unless you want to self-produce everything that you write, you are at the mercy of many elements which dictate whether your play will have a life in performance, and possibly enhance your career in some way, or not. It comes down to the subjectivity of who is at the other end.

And yet, now I've subjected myself to another realm of artistic ambiguity: what happens after writing my first novel?

THE WOMAN IN THE SUN HAT was released earlier this month. Of course, as with any novelist, the goal was to give first crack to literary agents, see if any would be interested enough to read it and, if so, hope they would be interested in representing me and, if so, would then ideally generate interest with a nice publishing house who could then give me some money and, of course, aid significantly in the marketing of the book. But as many in the industry know, and admittedly I did going in; such a glorious route is as easy to obtain as coming upon the Dead Sea Scrolls in your freezer.

I managed to incur, out of over 70 queries I sent out, not one request to read the manuscript. I gathered why, of course – and there are several reasons I can readily assume: my novel wasn’t in a hip genre (Horror, Sci-Fi, True Crime, Young Adult), nor was it sexy (fill in the obvious titles here), nor did it have the “killer hook” that is as sought after by agents as it is by Hollywood producers. It’s, quite simply, a journey of a Long Island wife, mother and literature teacher whose life is turned upside by the shocking arrest of her husband, which leads her on a funny and harrowing nomadic journey, ultimately returning her to her unsettling roots in a remote Jersey town.

This is not considered a “sexy” or “killer” hook by the industry. But it is a quick summation of what THE WOMAN IN THE SUN HAT is about. It is a novel about a modern woman and the many herculean obstacles she faces which challenge her sanity, while inadvertently building her character. It is a novel that contains nuance that is simply not able to be conveyed in a caption or synopsis. And while modern novels with multi-dimensional heroines do not appear to be in surplus, even in 2021, it was little surprise to me that the route to THE WOMAN IN THE SUN HAT becoming published would lead back to me.

And so, venturing back to the title of this blog post, this becomes yet another example of how IT TAKES MORE THAN WRITING. That said, I am thrilled that my wife and I’s theatre and arts education company, fandango 4 Art House, could be used as a publishing outlet for my first novel.

Today, we are just two weeks into selling it in ebook and paperback, as we continue to think of ways to market this piece to the world. All the while, we wait, while others read, and hope that word of mouth soon goes from a whisper to a caterwaul...as the weeks go by.