I need to thank three strong-willed women for making this book possible.
But first I’m going to tell you a story that explains why I need to thank them. I’ll try to keep it reasonably brief, but I’m not making any promises, so if you just want to know the names of those strong-willed women, go ahead and skip to the last paragraph of this section.
I’ve been writing professionally for more than twenty-five years now, mostly nonfiction and inspirational books, with a little theology thrown in for good measure. Some books were successful, some weren’t. So it goes. Still, I’ve managed to sell close to two million copies of my books worldwide, so things seem to be working out okay. For now at least.
Anyway, a number of years ago, there was a night when I couldn’t sleep. I was bored, so I spent the time making up the premise for a suspense novel. Afterward I figured, Why not? and I started writing it.
When it came time to pitch the novel to publishers, no editor would read it. My agent at the time explained it this way: “They keep telling me, ‘Mike Nappa is an inspirational writer. He can’t write suspense.’” So I did what any stubborn writer would do.
I erased my name completely from the manuscript and made up a pen name instead—a woman’s name. I resubmitted the manuscript to one of the publishers who’d seen it (and not read it) a year prior. I told them the author was a homemaker in Florida, and that this was her first attempt at writing.
I had a contract offer on my desk in three weeks.
In the end, I wrote three novels under that pen name. All were well-reviewed (one even won an award!), but to be honest, none of them were hugely successful, so maybe those original editors were right not to read my first manuscript. (Boy, it hurts to say that.)
Still, back in 2009, full of hope and wonder, I started writing Annabel Lee. I thought it would be the fourth book for my pen name. I got about thirty pages in when, surprise! My publisher notified me that they’d decided not to publish any more books from my homemaker in Florida. My brief career as a suspense novelist was over.
Hey, I figured, I gave it a good shot. Just didn’t work out.
So I went back to writing inspirational and theology books. In fact, I published two nonfiction books that I think are the best things I’ve ever written. Both of those books had first-class marketing and publicity campaigns attached, and both were projected to do very well in the marketplace—and both books failed spectacularly. One of them was such a financial fiasco that my editor told me to stop sending him new book ideas. Ever. He would, he told me in the most polite and respectful way, be laughed out of his publishing committee if he mentioned my name in there again.
Sigh.
About the time of that first big failure, my wife, Amy, started badgering me about “that story with the ‘safe/unsafe’ code in the newspaper.” Why didn’t I go ahead and finish that manuscript? She wanted to know what happened, and said it was kind of mean that I’d gotten her hooked with the first thirty pages and then left her hanging.
I told Amy, in the most polite and respectful way, that finishing Annabel Lee was an enormously stupid idea. Writing a suspense novel is really, really hard, I said. An awful, time-consuming, ego-shattering experience from beginning to end. And hadn’t I already failed as a fiction writer? Why waste a year working on a new book that was destined to fail like the others?
Amy politely and respectfully reminded me that I’d also failed in my career as a nonfiction writer. So why not try failing at fiction again? At least then she could find out what happened.
Wives, right? (Insert eye roll here.)
I told her no. Final decision.
And that was that.
Sort of.
My wife has learned the secret to controlling her husband. “I’m praying that God will change your heart,” she told me. And she started praying. Before long, she’d enlisted my pastor’s wife, Jan Hummel, to pray the same thing. Yeah, they ganged up on me. Pretty mean, right? And they kept cheerfully reminding me every week of their prayers for my career success as a novelist. And before long, I kept having more and more sleepless nights where all I could think about was what might be happening with Annabel, Trudi Coffey, and The Mute.
I caved.
All right, all right, I told Amy and Jan. I’ll write this book, and it’ll be a big, time-wasting failure, and it’ll be all your fault. So there.
They didn’t feel any sympathy for me. In fact, they were happy about my impending misery.
Whatever.
So I let myself get lost in the world of Coffey & Hill Investigations. It took forever, but I found myself not minding that so much. When Annabel Lee was (finally!) done, around Christmas of 2012, I was exhausted. But at least it was over. I gave a signed copy of the manuscript to Jan for Christmas and let Amy read it on my computer, and then I tried to forget about it. Except that now both Amy and Jan started pestering me to get it published. Given my publishing history, I knew that was a silly pipe dream—but I also thought I’d better not let them start praying again. I began sending it out to publishers and tried to hope for the best.
A lot of editors simply refused to read it. After all, I was an inspirational author, not a novelist.
A number of editors read it, hated it, and felt like they should tell me all the reasons why they hated it as part of the humiliating rejection process. (I never understand why editors think they have to do that . . . but I digress.)
Several editors read it, loved it—and then told me they still weren’t going to publish it even though they loved it. (I never understand that one either.)
One editor at a very large, New York City publishing house actually dangled a potentially lucrative contract in front of me. He loved Annabel Lee, he said, except for all that “supernatural” stuff. If I’d cut out the spiritual elements in the plot, he’d publish Annabel Lee for me. What could I do? I turned him down.
Then another publisher said she liked the book a lot, but it wasn’t religious enough. If I’d go back through and beef up the spiritual elements of the plot, her publishing committee would likely be interested. What could I do? I turned her down too.
See, Amy and Jan? Writing Annabel Lee was a complete waste of time. I told you so!
Then, in 2014, Vicki Crumpton at Revell came along. And this was strange: She read the book (even though she knew I wasn’t really a novelist). She liked the book. And she didn’t demand that I rewrite the whole thing to make it fit her preconceived notions of what was or wasn’t “spiritual.”
Huh.
Well, I warned Vicki, I know some people on your publishing team, and they probably won’t like hearing my name around the office. She just smiled and told me—in the most polite and respectful way—that doing her job was really none of my concern, now was it?
Long story short, Vicki won.
Next thing you know, here I am on a lazy Sunday afternoon, writing an absurdly convoluted story in the space where acknowledgments are supposed to go. But all that is to say . . .
Special thanks to three strong-willed, wonderful women who made this book a reality: my wife, Amy. My pastor’s wife, Jan Hummel. And of course, my editor, Vicki Crumpton. All of you make my life better—even when I stupidly get in your way.
—Mike Nappa
Summer 2015