This week’s guest authors, Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, have been best friends for 25 years even though Liz now lives in San Diego and Lisa in Chicago. They host a blog together, and now they’ve co-written a novel – Your Perfect Life – which is just out from Atria Books! Jen Lancaster calls it “a delicious page-turner,” and Claire Cook and Sarah Jio both call it hilarious. Liz and Lisa have such a lovely (and unusual) story about how their novel found it’s way into print, which to me says a lot about how simply being friendly and generous often circles back to you. Among the good things that came to Liz and Lisa: an editor who wanted to publish their novel, and their agent, Elisabeth Weed – in that order. Enjoy their story, and take a look at Your Perfect Life the next time you poke your head in a bookstore. – Meg
We always dreamed that when our book launched, it would be featured on a website like Meg Waite Clayton’s. And we have to admit, it feels amazing! But it also feels out of body, like we’re the characters in our novel, masquerading as people they are not. Maybe we feel this way because we have our own blog (formerly chicklitisnotdead.com), and we’ve made it our mission to support other authors—whose books we’ve devoured for years, the ones that make us act like two teenage girls at a New Direction concert when we get to meet them in person. Each time we come into contact with a Jennifer Weiner or a Liane Moriarty, we wonder when security is going to come, grab us by the collar, and toss us out!
Our path to publishing was a little bit different than most. Even though we worked tirelessly to get published for five years, juggling daytime jobs and families, we still feel like luck played a huge part in how we got our book deal. We love attending author events and it was at one of those book signings that Lisa, at the encouragement of a tremendously supportive author friend, introduced herself to our now editor, Greer Hendricks. At the time, they didn’t discuss our book, just babies and other books, but Greer remembered her. And later, when Liz wrote a post about her favorite books of the year, Greer reached out and personally thanked her. A discussion began about the book we were writing about two childhood friends who wake up the morning after their high school reunion to discover they’ve switched bodies. She said she loved the concept and would read it when we were finished. And a few days after we sent it to her, she emailed to say she wanted to buy it! We realize this isn’t how it usually works. But we’re thankful we came about our deal this way, not only because Greer is an editorial genius that we had longed to work with, but also because it’s another thing that keeps us grounded. It reminds us that you have to keep working hard and eventually, all the pieces will fall into place. But once they do, you better be ready to get in there and prove why they took a chance on you. Yes, a writer needs to have talent. Yes, they need to work their butts off. But we believe luck plays a part too—it certainly did for us.
So here we are, eighteen months after getting that incredible phone call from Greer (we may have squealed!), pretty much dying from the anticipation of our book launch and tour. This is where it all begins!
We like the fact that we will always consider ourselves just a couple of childhood best friends who are realizing a dream, one that wouldn’t be possible without a combination of the support of other authors and a fantastic team at Atria. At the end of the day, no matter what happens with the launch of Your Perfect Life, we are thankful to have taken this journey together. – Liz and Lisa
