Being a young, newly published author isn’t exactly as Mary Johnson, second-year English PhD English student, imagined it.
On the evening of Feb. 12, almost six weeks after her debut novel’s release with Razorbill, a now retired imprint of Penguin Random House, the Department of English invited students and community members to celebrate the launch of The Curse of the Eelgrass Bog at the Grizzly Grill.
A captivating children’s middle-grade tale, The Curse of the Eeelgrass Bog follows 12-year-old Kess Pedrock, a girl whose life in her family’s Unnatural History Museum is anything but ordinary.
When new girl in town Lilou Starling starts poking around the museum, things get even stranger. As Pedrock teams up with Lilou to uncover secrets that have long been hidden, they must confront the bog—a place haunted with witches, demons, and unlikely friends who help them realize how badly they need to come together.
When Johnson, who uses the penname Mary Averling, sat down for a roundtable discussion with Queen’s professor and author Sarah Tsiang and author Maggie North, she spoke candidly about the ups and down of writing as a graduate student and navigating the publishing industry.
While publishing a first and writing a second novel amid graduate coursework is an impressive feat, Johnson remained modest about her accomplishments.
“I try to do creative work when I’m feeling creative, and academic work when I’m feeling academic,” Johnson said at the roundtable.
Although Johnson’s dissertation work focuses on , she said in an interview with The Journal she uses a “different brain” for each writing practice.
While she doesn’t have strict writing rituals, Johnson notes it helps to keep her writing life separate from her school life. She works on her books in her bright, sunny, plant-filled apartment while saving her dissertation work for her office on campus.
Looking into the business side of publishing is just as important as reading a wide repertoire of books, Johnson tells students hoping to be published.
“Publishing can be predatory […] The most important thing is to surround yourself with good people you can trust,” Johnson said.
Though she spoke kindly about self-publishing, Johnson said it wasn’t for her.
“You really have to do all the work yourself,” she added. “The cover, the publicity, et cetera.”
Although companies like Amazon allow writers to publish and distribute books themselves, Johnson, who signed with her literary agent just after she had completed her full first manuscript as an undergraduate, wanted a more traditional experience.
“It depends on what you want out of [publishing]. For me, it was important to see my books on the shelves of bookstores.”
Since traditional publishers distribute to bookstores already, the responsibility doesn’t fall to the author, unlike in cases of self-publishing, where new authors may struggle to have their books stocked by major stores.
Despite the relative ease of now having a team of people behind her at Penguin, Johnson said at the launch it took longer than expected to get her first book out.
“People said to me, ‘you’re young, it’s going to happen for you,’ but then it took way longer.”
The first manuscript Johnson wrote has not yet been sold, but she’s hopeful it will one day find a home. By the time she found the right editor at Razorbill for The Curse of the Eeelgrass Bog, she was already pursuing graduate studies.
“Publishing is on fire,” she said. “There’s always drama […] The publishing industry is trying to figure out what it needs to be.”
In our post-pandemic, hyper-digital age, even publishers as big as Penguin are rethinking their approach to putting books out.
“It was a shock to see my original imprint, Razorbill, fold,” she added.
While Johnson’s next book is still forthcoming with Penguin in early 2025, it won’t be under the same imprint. As publishers strategize the future of the industry, Johnson’s experience underlines how aspiring authors may need to patient, not to mention flexible.
The Curse of the Eelgrass Bog is available wherever books are sold.
Tags
author, book, PhD, Publishing
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.