The Life of a Phoenix: Writing, Selling, and Reselling a Book
Like many authors, I have a writing partner. We plot, write, revise, and submit together. We wring our collective hands as we wait for news of submissions and edits, then celebrate or regroup together. She is all the things one would expect from a trusted co-writer. Only mine can’t talk. She can’t hold a pen. In fact, her hands can’t type a single letter. She is also brilliant. My writing partner is my daughter, Lexi, and she has a severe form of cerebral palsy. This is our story.
(I Got 8 Agent Offers; Then, My Book Died on Sub.)
Shortly after her birth 22 years ago, Lexi developed newborn jaundice. At her first doctor’s appointment I pointed out Lexi’s yellowed eyes and skin. I reported how she wasn’t nursing well and that she slept around the clock–nothing like the demanding newborns her four older siblings had been. The doctor told me I was just an overreactive new mom. I should go home and enjoy my “good” baby. So I followed doctor’s orders and took my good baby home. Little did I know that as she slept, her bilirubin, the substance that causes jaundice, was skyrocketing. It surged past the blood brain barrier and settled in the middle of her brain, devastating an area called the globus pallidus. This area is vital for proper movement, but it doesn’t control intellect.
Ours is a long story—the length of a middle-grade memoir to be exact—about how after months of searching, my husband and I discovered on our own what happened to Lexi. It’s about how her doctor changed the medical records to cover his mistake. But the real story isn’t about the crime or the tragedy. The real story is about the phoenix. It’s about how we discovered if I sat 10-month-old Lexi in my lap and supported her elbow she could drag magnetic letters around a cookie sheet and spell. First, words, then sentences then paragraphs. By a year and a half, toddler Lexi could spell and correctly use the homophones their, there, and they’re in sentences, along with hundreds of other words. The real story is about how a child who could do nothing on her own physically, was turning into an intellectual powerhouse. And most of all, it’s about how Lexi, who had every right to be bitter, sad, and resentful, was none of those things. She was, and continues to be, one of the funniest, most optimistic geniuses you could possibly imagine.
Writing with Lexi isn’t easy. Despite her advanced intellect–and sometimes because of it–her body is terribly difficult to control. The more Lexi tries to think her way through moving, the harder moving gets. Over the years we have developed an arsenal of tools to help her with communication from the low-tech cookie sheet to high-tech augmentative communication devices. None work perfectly or reliably. Each day brings a different body with different muscle tone issues, making it difficult for Lexi to develop any reliable motor pathways. So each day we reinvent the wheel. We MacGyver whatever tools we have on hand to meet the body du jour.
When it came to actually writing Lexi’s story into a book, we began by brainstorming together, creating a story notebook with a detailed outline for every scene or beat. This step proved to be indispensable in rewriting and revising and has become the essential foundation for all of our writing. After we completed the scene, I would write it up, then Lexi and I would get back together and edit. Back and forth, page by page, scene by scene, for five years.
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Lexi’s physical challenges was our most obvious obstacle, but it wasn’t the only one. While I had spent a lifetime as a medical writer and understood what makes good writing, I knew nothing about good storytelling. In the early days of drafting, we literally had Mary Kole’s excellent resource Writing Irresistible Kid Lit open on the desk beside us as we drafted. We also used Mary as a developmental editor when we needed fresh eyes and found her talent and expertise, along with good humor and compassion, to be the perfect match for us as we navigated our way through new territory. Later versions of the manuscript added Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel to the table. This book remains our go-to for plotting new stories. In the end, curating Lexi’s story into a compelling memoir took more than a half dozen drafts before we even started page edits.
When the finished story, The Year of the Buttered Cat: a mostly true story, was finally published by Penny Candy Books in 2020, we popped the cork (well, I did; Lexi was just 18 years old). What we thought was the end of a long publishing journey turned out to be another plot twist. After being named a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, enjoying starred reviews and selling out of two print runs, The Year of the Buttered Cat nearly met its demise after just a year and a half on the market. Penny Candy Books had struggled through the pandemic on a shoestring budget but wasn’t able to bounce back from the financial crater the shutdown created. They went out of business at the end of 2022. But in true feline fashion, our buttered cat was given another life. Our agent (Karen Grencik at Red Fox Literary) was able to re-sell the book to Andrea Spooner at Little Brown Books for Young Readers, upgrading the product with a full-color picture spread and a wonderful review from James Patterson. Little Brown even picked up our second book during the process. Cue the popping corks.
If first publications are book birthdays, second publications are re-birth days. May 14, 2024, is the rebirth day for The Year of the Buttered Cat: a mostly true story—a most fitting finish and beginning, in celebration of a true phoenix.
Check out Susan and Lexi Haas’ The Year of the Buttered Cat here:
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