I know it’s been rather quiet around these parts lately. I suppose there are a fair amount of reasons for that – we’re currently in NC hanging out with Maile’s family; I’ve also been busy on the book-writing front; and then there’s the scurrying to get ready for the release of The Day the Angels Fell on 9/5 WHICH IS LESS THAN THREE MONTHS AWAY (and which you can preorder HERE, an act which will also gain for you my undying affection).
In the meantime, there are two things I want to tell you about today:
2 – Today, I am honored to be on Anne Bogel’s (aka Modern Mrs. Darcy’s) awesome podcast, What Should I Read Next? Anne is the author of the upcoming book, Reading People, and we take some time to talk about what I’m currently reading, what I’ve enjoyed, what I’ve not enjoyed, and then she makes some perfect book recommendations. This is one of my favorite podcasts in the world, and I have to admit I was a little nervous in the beginning, but talking books with Anne is always a pleasure. I hope you’ll listen HERE.
There are many reasons to buy a book. Here are 27 of them:
You have high hopes that a particular book might be the book that will change your life.
You like the other things the author has written.
You read an excerpt from the book and liked it.
You want to be an encouragement to the author.
You heard a great review about the book and you’re convinced it will be a good read.
You’re bored.
There’s nothing good on TV anymore.
You’re looking for an alternative to arguing with relatives on Facebook about the current administration, and reading seems like a nice distraction.
You think the author might be crazy and you enjoy looking for clues of that in their writing.
You simply love reading anything.
Or, maybe you hate reading, but:
You need a good doorstop.
You need a decent paperweight.
You want to have thick books lying around so people think you’re smart.
You need a booster seat for your toddler at the dining room table.
You’re super-rich and $10 won’t break the bank.
You enjoy getting packages delivered to your door in two days or less because it helps you believe your Amazon Prime membership was worth it.
You need another book with a navy-colored spine to fill in a particular bookshelf.
You like to give books as gifts to other people.
You like to give books as gifts to yourself.
You love the author and want to help support his or her creative life (and his or her family of 8).
Or, maybe you hate the author, and:
You think that if you support the author’s writing, they’ll keep writing, which you think is hilarious because you think they’re terrible at writing and by supporting them, they’ll go on humiliating themselves by writing drivel, which will make you smile.
You think that if you buy enough of their books, they might become popular enough to go on a book tour, which might bring them to your town, which might give you an opportunity to humiliate them in real life, in front of other people, with difficult personal questions.
You think most wealthy people are secretly unhappy, and if you help the author sell enough books, they might someday become wealthy, and, therefore, unhappy.
You believe writers live tortured lives and want to help this particular author continue in that vein of work.
You believe most writers never live above the poverty level, so you want to give the author just enough hope to continue. Heaven forbid they fail and take up something financially rewarding, like banking. Or a multi-level-marketing scheme.
You hate the writer’s blog most of all and hope that if they succeed in book writing they will, for the love, stop sharing their blog posts on social media
You think that if you support their fiction, maybe they’ll stop writing their poetry, which is even worse.
This is me rocking a spike, oversized glasses, and headphones that are either playing “You Can’t Touch This” or “Go West Young Man.” Also, that’s either an Ocean Pacific or Bugle Boys sleeveless T because, obviously, who covers up guns like that? But even then, I cared most about good stories.
Back in early June, I sent my literary agent a text. We were expecting to hear a final decision from the publisher on Tuesday. It was Wednesday. I felt like so much depended on this. So many years. So many words.
“Any news?” I asked in the text.
She wrote back.
“Call me.”
* * * * *
In the dog days of August, circa 1985, I was a skinny 8-year-old reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on the farmhouse porch, waving away the flies. Cows mooed in the background. The thing I hated the most was mowing the lawn, or anything else that interrupted my reading.
We had no air conditioning in that massive farmhouse, only a handful of huge box fans to move the warm air around, and on especially hot nights I’d sleep on the floor in front of one of them, the loud hum drowning out the world. I attached a sheet to the fan so that it blew up around me in a dome shape. It was like sleeping inside of a cloud.
I read under that dome with a flashlight until long into the night, the pages flapping back and forth in the gale force. It was like my own world, my own universe. There was the smell of the farm, the scratchiness of the carpet, the weariness of my eyes growing heavy. There was nothing else.
I devoured books in those days. I drank them down straight. The best of them left me in something like a buzzing stupor, and I wandered the farm for weeks after finishing, drifting through the beautiful trance they left me in. I sat by the creek, fishing, and my mind followed the water, meandered all the way to the sea.
I felt a tangible ache for Narnia. I opened every closet twice, quickly, and peered deep into the darkness, hoping to see snow-laden branches or hear the voice of a faun.
* * * * *
In college I dove deep into writing. It started out as journaling, moved into poetry, and occasionally stumbled into a few, halting efforts at novels. I spent afternoons beside the Yellow Breeches, a narrow stream that wound its way through our campus. I wrote in pencil then. Words and words and words in a little red notebook I found in the basement just the other day. The eroded red notebook was hiding between old yearbooks and containers holding floppy disks. The words are barely visible now, rubbed raw by all those years, all those moves.
I wrote the first paragraphs of at least twenty novels that never went any further (I wonder about all of those characters, where they went, what ever happened to them). I wrote a fair amount on three novels, got far enough to realize I didn’t know what to do with the middle part. There was something about that section of a story that always felt awkward, always trailed off into mumbled plot lines that never recovered. I became bored writing them and figured that meant someone would get bored reading them. I set them aside or threw them away.
I finished writing one novel in those days, very short. Very not-good. I might know where it is, but I’d rather not look at it. If I do find it, I think I’ll burn it ceremoniously. Maybe on a floating bier.
* * * * *
My writing road, like most people’s, has been long and winding. For the last 17 years I’ve experienced mostly rejections: I was rejected from at least five MFA programs (at least five – I’ve lost track), numerous literary journals, countless agents, and a series of publishers. I’ve kept many of those rejections in a file folder somewhere. I don’t know why. Maybe because they’re like scars? Maybe because I still want to prove them all wrong? Maybe because they make up this long, winding road I’ve traveled?
I broke into the publishing world seven years ago with the publication of a book I co-wrote, and that led to a lot of opportunities. In the following years, I self-published three books and co-wrote another fifteen, but my dream was still to have a publishing house publish my fiction. My own stories. Ever since I was 8 years old, under that sheet dome in the middle of the night, reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe or A Wrinkle in Time, ever since then I’ve wanted nothing more than to make up stories, write them down, and have people read them.
Why?
I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that one. Maybe it’s because, to me, that’s the most real sort of magic I’ve ever encountered. I want to do it, too. I want to make that magic.
Four months ago, we started sending a book proposal for The Day the Angels Fell to publishers. That’s the book you all helped me self-publish through Kickstarter at the beginning of 2015. I think my agent sent the manuscript to 15 or 20 acquisitions editors. You can read about that process HERE and HERE. And that came with it’s fair share of rejections.
As one editor put it,
“Much as I like the voice, though, I’m afraid the story overall just doesn’t feel quite right for us.”
It was a long, hard wait, and towards the end I got impatient. I felt like the road I was on had leveled out and would never change. I was ready to move on with my life, chalk it up as another failure. But my agent, Ruth, kept encouraging me.
“Just give it a little more time,” she said.
So we did.
* * * * *
Then, a spark of light. An acquisitions editor liked my book. She loved it. She wanted her publishing house to take it on. We spent the better part of an afternoon talking with her, hearing her dreams for the book. I don’t think I said much. I was in shock. Someone who believed in my writing as much as I did? Someone from a publishing house who had fallen in love with something I had written?
“I’m taking this to my publication board next Tuesday,” she said. “And I’m hopeful that after that meeting, we will be making you an offer to acquire The Day the Angels Fell.”
* * * * *
Tuesday came and went. By Wednesday, I still hadn’t heard anything. I sent Ruth a text.
“Any news?”
She wrote back.
“Call me.”
I called her.
“I have good news,” she said. I sat there quietly as she told me the story.
Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, was offering me a three-book contract which included re-releasing The Day the Angels Fell, publishing the sequel, and publishing a third book of fiction, to be determined. I was shocked into silence. I couldn’t speak.
About ten minutes into describing the offer and what it meant, Ruth paused. She asked me a question.
“Are you happy with this?” There was uncertainty in her voice.
I laughed.
“Sorry, Ruth, I’m just in complete shock. I’m happier than you can imagine.”
* * * * *
Maile was listening outside the door the entire time. As soon as I hung up with Ruth, she came flying into the office.
“So?” she asked. “What did she say?”
I took a deep breath. I nodded.
“It’s good news. They’re making a three-book offer.”
She squealed.
“Are you serious?” she exclaimed. I told her the details. About that time, Ruth forwarded the offer letter to me.
“Here it is,” I told Maile. I started reading it to her, the opening note from the enthusiastic editor, Kelsey, who would now edit three of my novels. Here is one of the paragraphs:
When I initially read the first paragraph of The Day the Angels Fell, I was hooked. When one of our sales representatives read that same first chapter he emailed me immediately and said “this is something special.” Whether I’m reading what your fans are writing, listening to what my colleagues are saying, or am immersed in Sam Chambers’ world myself, I know that what you have here, in this book and in your writing overall, is exceptional.
The offer letter was so kind, so encouraging, so affirming of everything I’ve always tried to do as a story-teller. I got to the second paragraph of the offer letter when I was overcome with emotion. I sat down on the floor in the office, leaned my head up against the door frame, and sobbed.
“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” I finally said.
“You’ve been working towards this for years,” Maile said, laughing, still in disbelief. She sat down beside me. “This is it. You’ve finally done it.”
She took the computer from me and finished reading the letter out loud, and I sat there listening. It felt like she must be reading a letter written to someone else. I couldn’t believe this was for me.
* * * * *
I don’t think I ever would have gotten to this point without you, my kind and encouraging readers. For nearly seven years you’ve been reading my blog posts as well as the books I’ve co-written. Whether it’s the comments you’ve left, the emails you’ve sent, the reviews you’ve written, or the way you gave me overwhelming support when I self-published The Day the Angels Fell, your encouragement has propelled me forward on this journey.
There’s a long, exciting road ahead. We plan to release a hardback version (hardback!) of The Day the Angels Fell in the fall of 2017 (I know! That seems so far away!). It will be freshly edited and come with a brand new cover. For those of you who have been waiting for the sequel, The Edge of Over There, we’re planning to include the first few chapters of that book at the back of The Day the Angels Fell.
This is where I ask, once again, for your help. I cannot re-launch The Day the Angels Fell without your enthusiastic support. If you’re interested in being part of a fun group that will help me with the release of this book, sign up HERE. You’ll even receive a FREE ADVANCED COPY OF THE BOOK BEFORE IT RELEASES! In exchange, we’ll ask only two things: please review the book online, and help us spread the word during its release. You’ll also receive updates on our progress and provide important input on various things as they come up in the design and planning phase.
I’d love for you to continue to join me on this incredible ride. I promise I won’t email you more than once or twice a month. I won’t be sending these out in my normal newsletter, so if you can help with this book launch, please be sure to sign up HERE.
* * * * *
Now that the spike of excitement has begun to level off, I sit back and I wonder.
I wonder if I would have been in this precise spot, written this precise book, if I wouldn’t have received all of those stinging rejections through the years. I wonder if I would have met all the wonderful people I’ve met along the way if this opportunity would have fallen into my lap years ago. I wonder if we can ever write the stories we’re supposed to write without those times of deep sadness and disappointment, rejection and loneliness.
I hope you’ll keep walking your path. I hope you won’t give up. If I can do it, you can do it. I am no writing prodigy, no natural born success. I am simply someone who insisted on putting one foot in front of the other for a very long time. Someone who, with a lot of help from my writing community, refused to cave to the voices that told me I wasn’t good enough.
I wonder something else, too. I wonder what that little boy under the fan-and-sheet dome would think if he could have read The Day the Angels Fell. I wonder what dreams he would have had after reading it, what adventures he would have taken in the creek behind the church building. I wonder what he would have thought, looking up into the oak tree, the one struck by lightning when I was ten, the one that inspired the story in the first place.
Maybe somewhere, that will happen. Maybe a kid (or an adult) will stay up late into the night reading about Samuel Chambers. Maybe this book, this story, will somehow become tangled up in their life the way all those wonderful books I’ve read have become tangled up in my own.
A writer can hope.
Remember, please sign up HERE to join the launch team and receive your free advance reader copy next spring/summer. For more frequent updates and other random stuff, you can “like” my Facebook page HERE. And whatever your current dream, keep going!
It would be so much easier to wait a week before writing this post. In a week I will know a lot more. In a week I could write a strong piece in the vein of a “disappointed-but-not-giving-up” writer. Or maybe it will be a shocked, celebratory piece. It all depends on the news I get this week. But here, now, on this muggy evening in mid-June, four months after my agent began shopping my novel around to publishing houses, the in-between is hard to navigate.
Still, I think I should write this post. I think we need to share more in-betweens with each other. I think we need to be willing to say, “Look, this is where I am, and it’s not where I want to be, but will you come along, whatever might happen?”
* * * * *
I’ve received a few very kind rejections during this process from publishing houses who can’t figure out how to market the book or are uncomfortable making predictions on how it will perform. You know. Where they say things like “beautiful writing” and “wonderful voice” and “talent” yet at some point throw in the “but.”
But for all of the rejections and silence, my agent and I have gotten somewhere. Three publishers are interested, and one is even considering The Day the Angels Fell at their pub board meeting this week. So. I will know one way or another by Wednesday.
I know I’ve been on a strong “don’t give up” kick recently here at the blog, but, seriously. Don’t give up.
When I was 22, I was rejected by 5 MFA programs. That’s right. Five. I still have the rejection letters in a file somewhere. I wanted to get a masters degree in creative writing, but no one would take me. I applied to the best-of-the-best programs and a few of the average-of-the-most-average. Thank God they said no. I didn’t have a clue who I was as a person, much less as a writer.
For the next nine years – yeah, nine years – my writing life consisted of writing in my journal non-stop and regular rejections of my short stories by various literary journals and magazines. It was a steady diet of rejection, of “no,” of “you’re not good enough.” I wrote in my journal and then, when the sting of previous rejections had faded away, I’d write another short story and send it off. Months later, a form rejection. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Why didn’t I quit writing during those nine years? I’m not really sure. I had no outlet to the rest of the world – there were no blogs, no online magazines, no way for strangers to easily find and read my work. There was very little affirmation or encouragement. These days of easy access to readers is a both a blessing and a curse for writers. But I continued writing, gathering all the words, filling all the journals, and lining the journals up on my bookshelf, one after the other. “One page a day,” I’d tell myself, and that’s what I did.
Then, when I was 31 years old, eight years ago, I got the chance of a lifetime: I co-wrote a book for a real, live publishing house. During the last seven years, I’ve co-written over 20 books for other people, and I self-published a few of my own. But I’ve always kept that dream. I always wanted to be a novelist, published by a publishing house. I think that will always be in my mind, always something I aspire to. I no longer look down my nose at independent publishing. I think it’s a wonderful option, one I will probably use again in the future. But to have a publishing house love your work enough to bring you in, to publish your book? That’s always been my dream.
And now? I’m so close. But you never know how these things will go.
Maybe it’s because I’m almost 40, or maybe it’s because I’ve got five kids and one on the way, or maybe it’s because I no longer feel the pressure of trying to be a young prodigy…whatever the case, no matter the news I receive, I know I’ll keep writing. Not because this is the closest I’ve ever come to having a traditionally-published book, but simply because I’m a writer. I write. It’s what I do.
So. Enough about me. Maybe you feel like you’re stumbling along in whatever it is you do. You probably wish you were further along or higher up, better known or appreciated more than you are. Trust me when I say that you have no idea how the creative work you are doing today will come into fruition ten years from now, or twenty years from now. You just have to keep doing what you’re doing. Get better. Work harder. Study your craft. Keep making mistakes. Keep getting rejected.
It’s what I’m doing. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last 17 years. Maybe you’re just starting out, or maybe you’ve been on your path for 17 years. Or maybe you’ve been walking much longer. No matter. Let’s walk this road together.
It is very hard to allow emptiness to exist in our lives. Emptiness requires a willingness not to be in control, a willingness to let something new and unexpected happen. It requires trust, surrender, and openness to guidance. God wants to dwell in our emptiness.”
– Henri Nouwen
Last year I didn’t have any major writing projects from March through July. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to live without money, but it’s a fairly challenging experience. Watching your credit card balance go up month after month is a soul-sucking exercise. Maile got a part-time job at a local market, I worked weekends selling baked goods to try and make a little extra while cobbling together some odds and ends on the writing front.
It was a long five months. It felt like a very empty five months. I wandered around the house, tired, not sure where to sit.
Emptiness is a funny thing, because while it’s basic implication is “lack” (empty stomachs, empty space, empty containers), emptiness also signifies something completely different.
Emptiness means there is room for opportunity.
Emptiness invites us to stop trying to control everything, to sit back and wait patiently for what might happen next to fill the void.
Emptiness creates space for trusting God.
* * * * *
Maile and I were talking about the hope of emptiness yesterday morning as we face our normal uncertainties in life. Being self-employed is a constant exercise in trust. She marched over to the side table in our bedroom and read the following passage from Isaiah 43:
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. 20 The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.
“This isn’t the same old thing,” Maile insisted. “We’re not going around in circles. We’re not destined to live our past over and over again. God is doing a new thing. A new thing!”
The two of us sat there in the morning light, shadows from the sycamore tree outside the window waving on the floor of our room. We sat there, and for a moment we were in awe at the new thing this emptiness might bring.
This emptiness you’re experiencing? This sense that your circling around the same disappointment, the same failure, the same mistakes? It’s not true. There is a new thing in the making. There’s a stream making its way toward you, through the wasteland.
* * * * *
Where are you experiencing emptiness in your life? Would you consider beginning to see that emptiness as a space in which something new can grow?
* * * * *
I’m so excited to be giving away THREE FREE COPIES of a wonderful, beautifully-written book: Christie Purifoy’s Roots and Sky. If you’d like to enter your name for a chance to win one of those copies, leave a comment below. You could always let us know how past emptiness led to something new. Or you could let us know your current emptiness and we could commiserate with you. Or you could simply say, “I’d love a copy of Christie’s book!”
I could tell you the entire story starts in an underground bar in Philadelphia, one that smells of urine and marijuana. I could tell you that it started when we made our way down into the bowels of the city, graffiti on the walls, darkness dripping from the burned out, naked light bulbs.
But you all know me too well. You know my life is not nearly that exciting.
* * * * *
This is how the story really begins: My wife and I had gone with some friends to see one of my favorite bands, Over the Rhine. They were playing a Christmas concert in this unique venue in Philadelphia, a place I had never been before, a place called Underground Arts.
We waited outside in a rather long line to get in, and the rain started to fall. It was a cold, winter rain, the kind that makes you draw up your shoulders and wrinkle your eyes closed, the kind that has you inching close to complete strangers, trying to snag a small dry space under their umbrella. Finally the line started moving, and we shuffled up a few steps, through some large doors, and then, unexpectedly, down. I know – the place is called Underground Arts. I should have seen that one coming.
Down we went, down a winding set of stairs to the underbelly of Philadelphia. To be honest, I had never had much of a desire to see underground Philly. The above ground part is quite enough for me, thank you very much.
But Underground Arts was pretty awesome. We picked out our seats and had the added bonus of hearing Dom Flemons play the bones just before Over the Rhine started up. When I get the opportunity to hear Over the Rhine in person, it’s like being transported into another realm. Seriously. Their music is so beautiful, their lyrics so haunting, that I find myself in some kind of a trance.
But…what I wanted to tell you about came at the very end of the concert, just as Maile and I were making for the door. Our little guy Leo was only five months old at the time, and we needed to get back so Mai could give him his evening meal. As we began meandering through the crowd, someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“Are you Shawn Smucker?” a girl asked me.
Now, for a writer (unless you’re super spiritual or holy or have zero ego), that’s a fun moment, when a stranger knows who you are. Except this was no stranger – we had just never met in person before. It was Christie Purifoy, and we both wrote for the old and wonderful website Deeper Story, and we had both inexplicably ended up at the same Over the Rhine concert.
We spoke for just a few moments, but Mai and I had to run. I told Christie I’d invite her to the writers’ breakfast I had going on at the time, and after that it was back out into the cold rain, and the long drive home.
* * * * *
I did invite Christie to the writers’ breakfast, and she came, and it turns out she is one of the kindest human beings out there. She told us all about her book, only in its gestation at that point. This was one year ago. It was that period of time when authors talk about their books in hopeful tones, finding it hard to believe that these precious words might someday be bound up for everyone to see and hold.
This is that book. It comes out today. It’s called Roots and Sky, and it’s every bit as good as I expected it to be. If you like quiet memoirs, beautifully written, that pack a heavy punch, this book is for you.
When Christie Purifoy arrived at Maplehurst that September, she was heavily pregnant with both her fourth child and her dreams of creating a sanctuary that would be a fixed point in her busily spinning world. The sprawling Victorian farmhouse sitting atop a Pennsylvania hill held within its walls the possibility of a place where her family could grow, where friends could gather, and where Christie could finally grasp and hold the thing we all long for–home.
