I am thrilled to have my very good friend and writer extraordinaire, Kylie Ladd, guest blogging this week all about her brilliant debut novel, After The Fall (ATF), which is being released in the US and Canada TODAY!!

A gripping insight into the anatomy of an affair, The Sydney Morning Herald called ATF "a subtle, moving and perceptive story of love, loss and hope."  

I was totally enthralled with After The Fall from the very first page and was not surprised when Kylie told me it had been picked up in the USA by Doubleday (an imprint of Random House).

Congratulations Kylie on the release of ATF in North America! This is a massive achievement and deservedly so. How did overseas publication come about?

My Australian agent, Pippa Masson of Curtis Brown, knew there was a large market for commercial fiction (also known as women's fiction, a term I hate) in the US and sent the book to Stephanie Abou, who she had had contact with before, at Foundry Literary and Media Agency in New York. Thankfully, Stephanie liked After The Fall, and was also pleased that the novel had been Cosmopolitan's Book of the Month when it was released in Australia, and agreed to take it on. 

Wow! Isn't it almost impossible to get your hands on an American agent, especially one based in New York?

I didn't realise at the time but yes, industry blogs and articles have since suggested that securing a US agent, is a ludicrously difficult, tedious and lengthy task, not to be undertaken by the faint-hearted. I was incredibly lucky I had an in- thank you Pippa! Maybe that's a salutary lesson when looking for an agent in Australia- what are their overseas connections like? Curtis Brown have a multitude of contacts around the globe, including a European office- which sold the Turkish rights of After The Fall for me just recently.

How did Stephanie go about selling After The Fall to publishers?

Stephanie sent After The Fall out to around 40 publishers in the US. Three weeks later she began chasing them all up. Thirty-eight said no. Yep, that sure felt bad, though it is a lesson in the subjectivity of all this, and that you should never take rejection too personally. Some of those publishers sent glowing emails, but passed on the book due to market factors; others hated it outright.

To my delight however, Grand Central (an imprint of industry giant Hachette, who publish the Twilight books) loved it and made an offer. I was thrilled and ready to sign up there and then, but a day later Random House also made an offer.

What a dilemma! Did you do a Tom Cruise and jump up and down on the furniture?

Interestingly, I wasn't actually consulted as to which I'd prefer- the Doubleday offer was significantly higher than that from  Grand Central  (significantly higher than anything I'd ever dreamed of for a first novel written by an unknown Australia, to be honest) and it was assumed I'd go with that one... I was asleep at the time the decision was made! That said, I have absolutely no complaints-  Stephanie was just fabulous with negotiating the contract, and managed to retain audio rights to the book...

Audio Rights? Tell me more.

Two months after the Doubleday sale, Stephanie sold these to audio production company Tantor, who will release the talking-book version of After The Fall in the US this month. Another useful lesson- this made us all some extra money, and isn't something I would have ever thought to negotiate.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, how did the editing process differ?

The editing process was surprisingly similar to that in Australia... my Australian agent and publisher are in Sydney, while I live in Melbourne  (Broome in 2010), so I was already used to doing my edits electronically.  The only real difference is that a lot of the language and spelling in After The Fall had to be changed for an American audience... while the Australian setting was retained, most of our colloquialisms weren't. This was quite wrenching at times, watching ‘Mum' turned into ‘Mom' (it just doesn't look right to me!), ‘university' become ‘college' and words such as ‘togs' and ‘footpath' edited out. I had to laugh though when my editor had highlighted a phrase in a section of the book set at the Melbourne Cup: "Having a flutter".

"I don't understand", she wrote, "Are they going to the toilet?"

Hilarious. Will never again say ‘having a flutter' without thinking about bodily functions.

And the cover for After The Fall?

It was a pleasant surprise! The cover Doubleday chose was far lusher and sexier than either of my Australian ones.

Finally, how is After The Fall being marketed in the States and Canada?

Not surprisingly, Random House has a large marketing department, and have been great about keeping me in touch with all their plans. Media reviews won't appear until after the book is released this week, but Random House have also distributed a lot of ARCs (advance reading copies, sent to the reading public, not professional reviewers) which are great for generating buzz and mentions on book blogs, as well as over 25 pre-release reviews/ratings at sites such as Good Reads. 

Other things that Random House requested included a brief (300 word) essay on why I wrote the book, with a focus on my background as a psychologist, which has been posted on the Random House site and on Amazon; a reading guide to the book (posted on line for use by book groups);  and also that I have a strong online presence, in terms of a website and Facebook and Twitter membership. As yet, I can't tell if any of this has made any impact at all, and will be watching with interest over the next post-release month!

Kylie, I am so thrilled for you and wish After The Fall every success. I'm sure it will be a massive international hit, especially as Amazon has chosen it as a great summer read. Good luck!

 

Links:

http://www.kylieladd.com/

http://www.allenandunwin.com/

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385532815

http://www.amazon.com/

 You've been hanging out for this one haven't you?  Sadly, I think all my gems were handed out in Part A.

As you know, at the beginning of last week I ran away - not because I couldn't stand my family but because when I'm this close to handing in a manuscript I need to devote huge chunks of time to it...like sixteen hours a day. Not sixteen writing hours, just sixteen thinking, mulling, scratching hours. Thankfully, I have an accommodating husband.

To set the scene, here's a pseudo back cover blurb bit: - three main characters - all women, are off to Santorini for a two week sojourn, as you do ... they all have issues, major issues and, come hell or high water, these issues have to be resolved during their holiday. Won't spoil the story by telling you what these issues are, however the story is told through the main character, Claudia's eyes. Suffice to say there's lust, betrayal, marriage, hate, love and dead dogs in the mix.

Away from the family, day one, I'm reading through the manuscript and thinking it's not quite coming together. Not a great start. Having written and revised the 85,000 words, I thought something was still missing but couldn't pinpoint it no matter how many times I mulled over the chapters.

So assuming each character's identity, I wrote a letter to a dear imaginary friend I hadn't seen for ten years telling them what had been going on in my life for the last 3,650 days. (Great friends hey, given that I hadn't seen them for ten years!) My God! These women have problems, I just didn't realise how many!

Using this device, I was able to stretch my narrative further and really think about the lives these women had been living up to this point. I know what you're thinking - do you really need a back story that stretches all these years? Especially one that you're not going to include in the manuscript? - Well, frankly, YES! And a damn good one too, if you're going to create believable characters...a lot of the writing and thinking you do for your story won't appear in the final draft but you need a realistic  and compelling back story for each of your characters.

Armed with the new information I had about each of the women's lives, I fleshed out their characters a tiny bit more, and by the end of the week, after checking spelling, and other incidentals (time difference between Santorini and Brisbane, for example), I hit send.

Ah, sweet relief for a good five minutes...until the panic set in.

I felt decidedly uneasy ...sure I had the dead dog in there, But what else could I have done to improve the plot, characters, voice?

To distract myself, I went for a run (I am capable, just not inclined), ate an excellent dinner and put myself to bed. I was exhausted and it was late - 8.30pm. I fell asleep thinking good thoughts: all is okay. I made deadline! Yippee for me.

Well, I had this dream all about emotional depth. I sat bolt upright at two in the morning - I'm normally awake then, anyway. Epiphany! My main character lacked emotional depth. Garr! Thanks. Why couldn't I have shown this brilliant profundity of insight six months ago?

Bloody dream is right. That's exactly what main character is lacking! Over the weekend, I debated whether to pull the manuscript back from the publisher's paws...and decided against it.

The manuscript, tentatively titled Claudia Changes Course is in the hands (we hope) of a brilliantly skilled editor who has taken leave of Elizabeth Gilbert's latest and all the other best sellers she (could be male. I doubt it though) is working on to concentrate on my prose.

When the 85,000 words comes back to me at the end of the month, I'll sagely nod to the editor and nonchalantly say, ‘Emotional depth?'

And she'll say, ‘Yep! Add some!'

She might also say to me, if you knew your character lacked depth, why didn't you bloody well do something about it before we're just about to go to print?

Good question.

I can hardly answer, ‘It came to me in a dream, eight hours after I pressed send', or she might dob on me and tell the publisher I'm unstable!

‘And one more thing,' she'll say, as she's sauntering out of the room. ‘Get rid of that damn dead dog.'