Now to tell you the part you don't want to hear: each time a writer changes sub-genres he/she is, 99.9% of the time, dropped straight back to "newbie" status. Publishers, terribly fond of keeping authors in the "box" they're doing well in, hear you say you believe you can write something, gasp, "different," and immediately respond
with a lifted brow and a fairly snarky, "Oh, yeah? Prove it."

I do that, at least try to do that, by swallowing hard on my ego and writing The Whole Damn Book on spec. Just like a newbie. I suggest the same for anyone already in one "box" and trying to move to a bigger one. Don't just say it--bite the bullet and prove it!

I am, in between deadlines, working hard on joining all of you as a "thriller novel debut author," preparing for the "Oh, yeah? Prove it," line I'm sure I'll hear in another year or so. ITW and the rest of the world won't consider a thriller I may get published a "debut," but I will. I've gotten used to the drill...

But for now, I'll talk a little about my "mystery series debut", and show you the path I took to get to that particular "debut."

First, exactly what is the Maggie Kelly Mysteries series? And that's a toughie! The series is part mystery, part fantasy or paranormal (you pick), part light romance, part comedy. Just not the sort of thing you can wrap into one powerful sentence and peddle to publishers, who say they want something "different" right up until the moment it lands on their desks. Then the questions begin: Exactly what is this? How do we market it? Where do we slant it? Where will bookstores shelve it?

Well, hell, how is that my problem? I just get the ideas and then write the books. So I started telling them: think "Murder She Wrote" meets "Remington Steele". That sounds High Concept, right?

And here's how I got the idea. I alternate between writing single title historical romances and single title contemporary romances. One day, writing a historical romance, my hero said something fairly obnoxious to my heroine, who had to respond as a genteel Regency Era lady, when all I wanted to do was to write this very contemporary line for her: "Oh, stuff a sock in it!"

The next thing I knew I had Maggie Kelly, failed romance writer and now NYT bestselling Regency Era mystery writer; a woman who turns around in her Manhattan apartment one day to find her Regency Era hero live and in color in her living room -- his comic relief sidekick standing beside him, munching on the KFC chicken leg Maggie had planned for her lunch. The Viscount Saint Just has popped out of Maggie's imagination and has no intention of popping back in again ... and the two set out solving wacky crimes that seem to keep presenting dead bodies at Maggie's feet.

Okay, I can see where publishers had a point. Where do you slot a concept like Maggie and Saint Just?

For two years, nobody slotted them anywhere, because nobody would touch the series. It was the proverbial "I could wallpaper my powder room with rejection letters," and I was a "newbie" all over again.

Finally, a publisher bit. The first book, MAGGIE NEEDS AN ALIBI, did pretty well in hardback and hit USA Today, even if it was the only mystery shelved in the Romance section of all the chains—because I might have been a mystery newbie, but I'd been around in Romance since the Great Flood (and the publisher refused to allow a pseudonym change, as I had built a following with the one I had). Same for books two and three (MAGGIE BY THE BOOK; MAGGIE WITHOUT A CLUE); there they were, stuck in the Romance section, unseen by mystery readers.

So, in its infinite wisdom, the publisher asked the janitor, the FedEx guy, and possibly a marketing executive fresh from selling widgets for input in How To Get This Series Moving Up. Kidding, kidding! Lord bless 'em, they did their best (while I quietly
hyperventilated into my bag of M&M's). They changed from hard/soft to trade/soft. They put cartoon characters on the covers. They changed the titles, hoping for the chick-lit audience (first I knew I was writing chick-lit). Gone were the alphabet titles (Alibi, Book, Clue), and we had High Heels and Homicide, followed by High Heels and Holidays. And then another shift -- book six was christened BOWLED OVER.

Why? Don't ask me. Like I said -- I just write the books.

BOWLED OVER will be the last Maggie Kelly Mystery (although "Maggie Kelly Mystery" was ditched from the covers after Clue). The reviews were there, all good; even Kirkus didn't hate me too badly. But the sales just weren't climbing fast enough. Gosh. Tint me shocked. I'm only surprised that anybody found the books.

You're thinking this is a real downer of a story for a Debut Authors page, huh? But it isn't! It's a cautionary tale. Care. Don't be so damn grateful your baby got into print that you'll say a meek "O- kay, I guess you know best" every time your publisher says, "Hey, we flipped a coin and we think this will work ..."

I love Maggie and her Saint Just. I have enough plotlines for all of the twenty-six "alphabet" books I had planned to write (okay, so the "X" book was provingproblematic; I would have worked that out -- and I still think Sue Grafton writes slowly because she dreads hitting the "X" title, too). But I was so damn grateful to be allowed to write my stories that I didn't fight, I didn't kick and scream over things I should have kicked and screamed about -- the pseudonym change and title shifts most especially.

"I just write the books." That's the excuse I've been offering so far, right? I was wrong. Old enough to know better, around this business long enough to trust in my own instincts, I was too thrilled to have been let out of yet another "box" and into another genre to go to the wall about these changes. I don't blame the publisher. I should have done more to protect my "baby."

I'm not advocating you sell your book and then turn into a card-carrying pest, sweating all the small stuff. But stand up for your work by standing up against some of the well-intentioned things publishers do to that work once it's in their hands. Don't nit-pick, don't become known as "difficult." Choose your battles carefully, and then fight them.

I didn't do that, and Maggie and Saint Just won't get those twenty-six books ... although if you want to see the sneaky way writers score points, pick up a cartoon cover, trade-size copy of BOWLED OVER in your local bookstore this November (try the Romance section) and sneak a peek at the first few pages recounting Maggie's thoughts on how to succeed in this wacky business ...

Kasey Michaels
kaseymichaels.com