Read The Guilty!
It feels like twenty years ago…
Actually, it was twenty years ago! I linked up with my first agent back then to shop my novel, The Guilty. It was an interesting process because every editor who read the book said they loved it, but couldn’t figure out how to market it. So, after three years of frustration, we went another direction. I started writing the sort of thing reflected by The Dead Women of Juárez, and we were off to the market. Things proceeded from strength to strength, and by the time the third book in The Borderland Trilogy, Missing, received two Crime Writers’ Association Dagger nominations, I was a known quantity as an author, albeit primarily in Ireland and the UK.
The Guilty still didn’t sell.
At that point, I figured The Guilty wasn’t going anywhere and that I ought to forget it, even though it was a book that spoke directly to my academic training, my personal interests, and my family life. People wanted crime. They wanted thrillers. The story of a young German nursing student wasn’t on anyone’s radar.
Thankfully, Tanja Slijepcevic at Betimes Books was aware of The Guilty, thought it was great, and didn’t give a damn if it didn’t fit some marketer’s paradigm. We teamed up, and now the book is out there.
I was proud of the book twenty years ago, and I’m proud of it now. Four CWA Dagger nods later, and everything else, it’s still my favorite of my published works.