I went to New York for a couple of days this week, for work. I met with a bunch of agents, had dinner with colleagues, and showed one of the authors I’ve just started working with around the NY office (and found out that our in-person vibes are even better matched than I’d hoped). But the major reason I planned this trip is to go to a book launch. (Editors often don’t get to go to the launches of the books they work on. Depending on the publisher, or where the author or editor lives, or a whole host of other reasons, it’s rarer for an editor to show up at a launch than it is a publicist.)
Clay McLeod Chapman’s Devil Inside is probably one of the few times as an editor I will be in a position to work on a book from the very beginning, getting to see the first spark of the idea and help nurture it. So it holds a bit of a special place in my heart. And we’ve been working on it a long time!
In the span of time since the very first email I sent to Clay, telling him if he ever wants to write a romance I was up for it, I started working at MIRA full time. I acquired several other books. I wrote my own book! It’s been a big year and a half or so professionally. And it felt like I really need to cap off the whole thing with this NYC trip.
Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the trip was fantastic! It was cool to just be in New York, and walk down Broadway, and take the subway, and experience this city, which is electric. There are a couple of little details about the Strand launch that will be etched in my memory forever, though.
I got to hang out in the green room, feeling like an enormous imposter with Clay and Nat Cassidy and Rachel Harrison (who were all incredibly lovely and normal and down to earth people of course), and see the rare book room before everyone arrived and just soak in the atmosphere. And I got to say hi to so many people in the horror community I don’t get to see hardly ever, people who traveled to the event too, and it was so amazing to see folks make time on a Tuesday to show up because they were excited for a book that I edited.
I got to wear my Devil Inside dress that I made again and people actually knew what it was referencing instead of people looking at me slightly askew. And I had dinner with Clay’s family and friends where I had a moment where I was absolutely exhausted, sitting at this table in a super loud bar, watching and listening to these incredible conversations happening, thinking, how is this my life. Fucking magic.
But there was one last thing that is perhaps a pinnacle, never to be repeated. Before the event, Clay and I were hanging out at a coffee shop, you know, just saying hi before the chaos and whatever. A gentleman came over as we were leaving and asked if Clay was, you know, Clay Chapman the writer? And of course Clay said yes. So he said he loved Clay’s collection Acquired Taste and was looking forward to the event. Very nice interaction.
After the conversation part of the event was over, this same gentleman came up to me and said he had bought one copy of Devil Inside with his ticket. Then he heard Clay’s reading and bought a second for his girlfriend. And he was coming to me because after listening to Clay (who said way too many nice things about the contributions I made to the book), he wanted to know if I’d sign his copies too.
I expect there will be opportunities for me to sign my own book in the near future. But to be asked to sign a book I edited? Because an author went above and beyond to let like a hundred people know that it was a partnership, an experience that felt so collaborative? I have never felt so seen and recognized and bursting with pride. I don’t think this person realized just how rare or incredible it was for him to ask and I am profoundly grateful. Thanks, Theo. And thanks forever to Clay.