A Career-Changing Moment?

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  One of the most rom-com moments I’ve ever encountered in real life was last May at Malice Domestic, when wife and husband Tara Laskowski and Art Taylor were both nominated for best short story.

Now. I ask you, Reds and readers, is there anything cuter?

Tara won (she tied with FOTR Leslie Budewitz), as it turned out. It would have been fine anyway, since Art had already won about fifty million of them,  but the 2018 awards scales were further balanced in that he won the Edgar for the same story).

And they have the cutest son in the world—Dash. If you follow them on Facebook, and you should, truly, you will love him, too.

ANYWAY.

That might have been a career-changing moment—since Tara’s first novel ONE NIGHT GONE is about to come out—and you can pre order here—we’re probably about to find out. Or! Being here today might be one, too.  For you, too, Reds and readers.

Career-Changing “Aha” Moments

    by Tara Laskowski

A few years ago, I was discussing my then novel-in-progress with Christina Hogrebe, an agent at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. This was a book that I’d written and then rewritten and then rewritten again—a 500-plus page love story that spanned several decades and was set in my hometown in Pennsylvania.

Once I finished talking about that book and the other idea I had for a literary/women’s fiction novel, Christina paused for a moment. She then asked me the question that would completely alter my writing path forever:

“Do you read in that genre?”

I know people overuse the lightbulb-went-off cliché all the time, but I can tell you that if there was a lamp in my head, someone would’ve been in there yanking the cord with all their might. Because my answer to her question was “no, not really.”

Sure, I read widely. I like literary fiction. I like YA, fantasy and sci-fi. And I’ve certainly read and loved women’s fiction and romance. There were specific novels that had inspired my own manuscript. Crooked River Burning by Mark Winegardner was a big one (and you should really go buy that book immediately—it’s fantastic). Feast of Love by Charles Baxter. The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank. Running in Heels by Anna Maxted.

But this is not the genre, generally, that fuels my fire.

I love murder. Mystery. Suspense. Creepiness. I want to devour the novels of Tana French, Megan Abbott, Laura Lippmann, Paul Tremblay. The books I gravitate to in the bookstore are the ones with the creepy covers and even creepier premises.

So why wasn’t I writing the kinds of books that I would want to read?

After that phone call with Christina, I made a move that was a little devastating and scary. I shelved the two novel manuscripts I’d spent more than eight years on. And I started something new. Something creepy. Something I thought I would get excited about if I saw it on the shelf in an independent bookstore.

That something ultimately become my debut novel, One Night Gone, which is being published this October 1.

Christina’s question was what I call a career-altering “aha” moment for me. It set me on a new, unknown path, but I believe it set me on the right one. And like all moments of change, it was scary at first. And daunting. But I’m so very grateful for it.

As writers, I’m sure we can all easily point to “aha” moments we had about our writing. Maybe it was a beta reader who led us to realize that one of our characters could just be deleted from the manuscript. Or a workshop critique that shed the light on the true ending and resolution of a short story. Those “aha” moments are wonderful, and they prove that surrounding yourself with a good community of writers and readers makes you a better writer.

But fewer and rarer are the career-changing “aha”s. Sometimes they come because of a failure—a lost job, an unsold manuscript, a bad review. Sometimes they come when you’ve wildly succeeded at something you thought you were just playing around with.

Others, like mine, have been smaller in scope. The moment in college when I realized I was an English major not because I wanted to go to law school like I’d thought, but because I wanted to be…an English major. The time I won a flash fiction fellowship and realized my true joy was in crafting very tiny moments and perfecting that art.

They could be small acts of generosity or kindness from someone, or a perfectly timed question or comment by a well-meaning, savvy person.

Whatever they are, whenever they come, they are worth sitting up and listening to.

Because, like everything, you can’t really succeed unless you take a risk.

Do you have a writing-related career “aha” moment?

HANK: Oh, definitely. When my first draft of my first novel turned out to be 723 pages long, and an up and coming agent-acquaintance read it. (Can you believe it? She’s now the powerhouse Elisabeth Weed.) She said: "Cut 400 pages. I showed you what to cut from the first 50. Do the rest just like that."   And that seemed to work—that turned into PRIME TIME!

How about you, Reds and readers? A career 'aha" moment? And it doesn’t have to be about books.

ONE NIGHT GONE

Part electric coming-of-age story and part breathtaking mystery, One Night Gone is an atmospheric novel about power, privilege, and sisterhood. One sultry summer, Maureen Haddaway arrives in the wealthy town of Opal Beach to start her life anew—to achieve her destiny. But Maureen’s new life just might be too good to be true, and before the summer is up, she vanishes. Decades later, when Allison Simpson is offered the opportunity to house-sit in Opal Beach during the off-season, it seems like the perfect chance to begin fresh after a messy divorce. But when she becomes drawn into the mysterious disappearance of a girl thirty years before, Allison realizes the gorgeous homes of Opal Beach hide dark secrets. And the truth of that long-ago summer is not even the most shocking part of all...

TARA LASKOWSKI is the award-winning author of two short story collections, Modern Manners for Your Inner Demons and Bystanders, which was named a Best Book of 2017 by The Guardian. Her debut novel One Night Gone will be published in October 2019 by Graydon House Books. She is the editor of the online flash fiction journal SmokeLong Quarterly, an Agatha Award winner, and a member of Sisters in Crime. A graduate of Susquehanna University and George Mason University, Tara grew up in Pennsylvania and lives in Virginia.