![]() They’d had a little influx of money, so they were in the middle of a makeover. Big changesĪs I was writing the Peru book, there were some changes going on with the publisher. I didn’t think it’d sell a billion copies, but I felt it had a very good chance of speaking profoundly to at least a few of the people who happened to pick it up. When I finished, I knew I’d completed a very solid novel. I set to work on another work of biographical fiction, this time dealing with the 10 years I spent living in Peru. With the success of Birkie, I felt confident the publisher would be open to my next effort. ![]() If the work is going to stand any chance, it has to actually be good. You can’t rely on browbeating people into being afraid to admit it’s not great. There’s no muscling your book onto shelves at the expense of everyone else. You, the author, basically have to do all of the promotion yourself. The problem with partnering with a small publisher is that there is almost no marketing budget. To this day people write to tell me they read it once a year. Beyond Birkie Fever was released in 2010 and hit the ground running. This is not the type of book that you write to get rich, but I knew that there was a small group of very passionate people who would be interested in the topic. The second book I did for them was a work of biographical fiction about the years I spent as a cross-country skier. Fortunately my publisher insisted that the best way to promote your first book was to write a second. The book got positive reviews but didn’t really take off. The first book that this publisher had done of mine had been a kind of paint by numbers fantasy. ![]() I like being able to sit down with a coffee with the guy who owns the company and fret about how to keep the place in business. The truth is that I like the small publishers. I’ve taken a few halfhearted swings at the big leagues, but nothing more than a few email submissions to agents and other people with supposed connections. I’ve always worked with small publishers. Imagine my surprise when they rejected it. I felt confident that this was the best manuscript I’d yet turned in. I’d had a good relationship with the publisher having done two books with them already. It’s a sobering moment to have a scowling mercenary wearing a mismatched uniform jab you in the stomach with the barrel of an AK-47. I was traveling from Peru to Ecuador when the bus stopped in the jungle and soldiers with machine guns came on board and told all the men to get off. This was back in the days when I was a reckless kid in my 20s. And I feel in a way spiritually we are living together.The manuscript started with the true account of the time I was hauled off a tour bus at gunpoint. People say to me, "What do you have to say every day?" Well, if you are living with someone you always have something to say. If you asked me what happened July 17, 1998, I go to the closet and I can tell you in a minute what happened. And now I have a closet with almost 30 years of letters. When I moved to the United States in 1987, I started for the first time keeping my mother's letters. We would do that every time we were separated, and we've been separated most of our lives. I was 15, living in Chile and she was living in Turkey because her husband was a diplomat. Tell me about that.Ī: It all started many years ago. I understand the two of you write letters to each other every day. Q: You mentioned earlier about your mother being 95. Why would she carry around all of this stuff that she cannot take to her grave? It weighs on her. She's letting go of all the material world and preparing herself spiritually and emotionally for the end of her life. I feel lighter, much lighter.Īnd I think in Alma's case, in a way she is preparing for death. Letting go is very liberating, and I'm feeling it now. I left behind stuff, memories, everything. I was living in a large house with a pool and with many rooms and a beautiful view on top of a hill and then I downsized to a small house with one room where I can be very contained. What's your feeling about the value of shedding things?Ī: That is exactly what I have done recently. Q: Alma, the female protagonist in the book, has gone through a significant downsizing to move into a retirement home. Everybody around me knows - my publisher, my agent, my parents - that starting Jan. The best way is for me to have a day to start. I need to separate on my calendar the introverted time and the extroverted time. So in order to find the time and the silence to write, I need to set aside a few months in the year. (Atria Books via AP) (The Associated Press) This photo provided by Atria Books shows the cover of the book, "The Japanese Lover," by author, Isabel Allende.
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