Carolyn Reidy, a pillar of my publishing career and the woman at the helm of Simon and Schuster for years, passed away on Tuesday of this week, succumbing to a heart attack at her home in the Hamptons. \u00a0My first two manuscripts were purchased by Avon Books in 1983 when she was president of the company. \u00a0I was a completely unknown and very minor author at that point in my career, and the people running the show in New York were far above my pay grade. \u00a0I knew my editor, John Douglas, and that was it.<\/p>\n
A couple of years passed and Avon Books celebrated its 50th anniversary. \u00a0By then Carolyn Reidy was the Publisher at Avon and she summoned one an all to a party at Rockefeller Center in New York City. \u00a0It was there I met her for the first time, standing in the receiving line. \u00a0And it was also there that I learned the storied history of paperbacks. \u00a0They were invented during World War II, designed to be lightweight enough that soldiers could carry books with them into the field in their pockets or back pack\u2014hence the name \u201cpocket book.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the world of literary snobbism, original paperbacks, in which form I was being published, are generally looked down upon. At one point along the way, I was a volunteer for the Pacific Northwest Writers\u2019 Conference, and my job was to pick up an editor arriving from New York at SeaTac, drive her to the conference at Pacific Lutheran University, and then return her to the airport when the conference ended. \u00a0On the trip from the airport, the editor whose name I can\u2019t recall told me that the world of original paperbacks “is where anybody who wants to get published can get published.\u201d \u00a0Thank you very much! \u00a0I took her to the conference, I dropped her off, I have no idea how she got back. \u00a0For all I know she\u2019s still down there wandering around in the wilds of Tacoma somewhere. \u00a0I guess I do hold a grudge, but \u00a0I digress. Again.<\/p>\n
When Until Proven Guilty came out in 1985, Adams News, the local book wholesaler, purchased a total of fifty copies for the entire Seattle area. \u00a0Several years later, they were buying my books in pallets, thanks in no small measure to the careful shepherding of my first sales rep, Holly Turner. \u00a0But pallets of books meant something, even in New York, and when Carolyn Reidy made a publisher\u2019s sojourn around the states, meeting and greeting authors like a member of royalty greeting his or her subjects, she and John Douglas made a stop in Seattle where Bill and I were invited to dinner.<\/p>\n
The meal was held at a downtown Ruth\u2019s Chris steakhouse which was located on Fifth Avenue at the time. \u00a0Carolyn and my editor were staying at the Alexis, five blocks away and straight down the hill on First Avenue. \u00a0Publishing dinners aren\u2019t your basic fast-food dining experience. \u00a0We\u2019re talking cocktails, wine with dinner, dessert\u2014all very civilized and time consuming. \u00a0 We had met up at the hotel and walked up the hill to dinner (No small feat, by the way!) \u00a0\u00a0It turns out this was winter, however, and by the time we emerged from the restaurant, it had snowed and was still snowing.<\/p>\n
This was in the old days. \u00a0Both Carolyn and I were wearing high heels, and high heels, ten percent grade Seattle sidewalks, and snow just don\u2019t mix. \u00a0So finally after almost falling flat, we both took off our heels and walked four downhill snowy blocks in our stockinged feet. \u00a0Talk about a bonding experience. \u00a0Sometime after that, Simon and Schuster stole Carolyn away from Avon Books. \u00a0I was sad to lose her, but even after she left, we always stayed in touch.<\/p>\n
More years passed. \u00a0Avon Books morphed into Morrow and eventually into HarperCollins. \u00a0In the early 2000s Harper published the first Ali book, Edge of Evil, but then they declined to exercise the option to purchase a second one. \u00a0What\u2019s a girl to do? \u00a0I called up my barefoot snowboarding pal, and the rest is history. \u00a0Since then I\u2019ve had two publishers\u2014Simon and Schuster for the Ali books and HarperCollins for everyone else.<\/p>\n
Working with two major publishers means walking a bit of a tightrope with multiple pub dates, editors, marketing folks, and publicity people, and none of them entirely comfortable with working across those corporate lines of demarcation, but I\u2019m happy to say we\u2019ve all managed.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, when Bill and I were in New York for ThrillerFest, we invited everybody from both sides of the aisle to a dinner party at an entirely appropriate restaurant called The Writing Room. \u00a0It was glorious. \u00a0My longtime agent and her husband were both there as was John Douglas, my first editor and Carolyn Reidy my first and, at the time, current publisher. \u00a0We sat next to each other and swapped stories, including our barefoot-in-the-snow adventure. \u00a0Among the guests were my then current editors\u2014Lyssa Keusch and Susan Moldow along with any number of corporate folks\u2014Lynn Grady, Liate Stehlik, Tara Parsons, Kaitlin Harri and Jennifer Hart. \u00a0Ditto my dueling publicity ladies\u2014Julie Paulauski and Jessica Roth.<\/p>\n
It was a bit of a roast, but it was also great fun. \u00a0In the process I had a chance to say a sincere and very public thank you to Carolyn Reidy for all her help along the way, and I\u2019m so glad I did. \u00a0If I hadn\u2019t thanked her then, I would have missed it entirely.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the reason I\u2019m telling you about Carolyn Reidy today. \u00a0Lots of us are locked up at home right now. \u00a0Maybe there\u2019s someone in your life that you could take the opportunity to say thank you to them in a very heartfelt way. \u00a0Maybe some of them are at risk, and I\u2019m sure they\u2019d appreciate hearing whatever you have to say. \u00a0Saying thank you will be good for them and good for you. \u00a0I believe that counts as a win\/win.<\/p>\n
Besides, there\u2019s always the possibility you won\u2019t get another chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carolyn Reidy, a pillar of my publishing career and the woman at the helm of Simon and Schuster for years, passed away on Tuesday of this week, succumbing to a heart attack at her home in the Hamptons. \u00a0My first two manuscripts were purchased by Avon Books in 1983 when she was president of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-xI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2091,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090\/revisions\/2091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}