I’m Rereleasing My First Novel

An announcement and an explanation

In 2015, my first novel, Out of Order, was published with Dreamspinner Press. It was a NaNoWriMo novel, meaning it was written in just one month — November 2012. It’s hard to believe that was over ten years ago now. I was 17 years old.

I revised the hell out of it and pitched it to Harmony Ink, Dreamspinner’s then-new Young Adult imprint, in 2014. I wasn’t expecting to ever hear back from them, let alone get a contract in my inbox a few short weeks later.

I got a $500 advance for that book, which felt like a million dollars to a teenager with the “weird” little hobby of writing stories in her bedroom after her family had gone to sleep. At the time, I was a fairly prolific fanfiction writer online, but I rarely let anyone I knew IRL read my stories.

Suddenly, it was out in the world.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but the book did well.

It did well enough, in fact, that it was shortlisted at the 2016 Bisexual Book Awards in two categories, Mystery and Teen/YA Fiction. I didn’t win, but I was practically begged to write a sequel. Book Two, Order in the Court, came out in 2016, and it, too, was shortlisted for two Bisexual Book Awards.

It felt like a faerie tale. I was on top of the world. I’d barely started university, and I was a published novelist twice over! I was sure I’d be putting out a new novel every year from then on.

Things didn’t work out that way.

Shortly after I began working on my third book, Dreamspinner Press got into some trouble due to mismanagement of author royalties. Authors began tweeting about payments being late, missing, or incorrect in late 2017. Cheques were bouncing, and soon began to arrive postdated. My third contract never materialized, despite initial interest in the manuscript. Dreamspinner then fell heinously in arrears paying author royalties and fully stopped paying anyone in 2019/2020.

They gave us the run-around, but more and more damning evidence began to surface. I pulled my books from Dreamspinner Press when my five-year contract for Order in the Court came to an end in 2021.

They had completely lost my trust.

For a while, I was worried that my books would be out of print forever. Then I had other things to focus on: I met the love of my life, moved to Europe, and started grad school. I was still writing weird little stories when my husband was asleep, but The Survivor’s Club Series was always a nagging loose end in the back of my mind.

In January 2023, I submitted my Ph.D. thesis. Not a student for the first time ever, I was suddenly faced with the prospect of the rest of my life. What do I do now? I asked myself.

While waiting on my thesis defense, I decided, What the hell! and reached out to JMS Books with a proposal: would they be interested in a three-book series, the first two of which had been previously published?

To my surprise, much like the first time, the answer was “yes.”

Things quickly snowballed from there, and now, with my PhD defense in just a couple of weeks, my first book, Out of Order, is ready to be rereleased on April 22, 2023. (It’s available for preorder April 8–21, 2023.)

I’m a very different person than the 17-year-old who wrote the first scenes of Out of Order in 2012. I wasn’t even out of the closet as bisexual then, although being published as an #OwnVoices author took care of that for me!

As a 28-year-old with far more experience, I’ve worked closely with an editor at JMS Books to bring Out of Order up to a standard that I wasn’t capable of back then. It only took a few relatively small changes to the text, but I feel like the quality of the book has improved significantly from where it was. And that’s not even to mention the fantastic new cover!

Before

I often felt like my editor and cover artist at Dreamspinner Press had no idea what to do with my “weird little thriller” of a debut novel.

A YA murder mystery with a biracial, bisexual teenage girl protagonist? they seemed to ask at every step of the process. How do we market that?

Rather than figure out how to meet my needs, it was like they clocked out the moment I signed the contract. They didn’t even put an Asian model on the cover, which was one of my firmest requests. Instead, they went with feet of all things — imagery which they continued with the second book in the series, although it made even less sense for Book 2.

Do feet sell books?

The original artwork never quite sat well with me, but I didn’t know why. Even though I went through quite a few options with them, nothing ever looked good to me. The cover didn’t really reflect what the book was like, and I worried that it would turn off some potential readers. I felt like I was settling for something nobody really liked.

“The cover does not do this book justice,” reads one Amazon review. “Sure, it captures an important part of the story, but it’s not the kind of cover that sells this book properly.” [x]

After

I really, really like the new cover art. I saw the first round of proofs and replied immediately, “No notes. It’s perfect.”

The artist took a long, rambling email full of suggestions (my main request was “no feet!”) and turned it into exactly what I wanted when even I didn’t know what I wanted. That’s talent, right there.

I’ve come to realize that I was never really treated well at Dreamspinner. They were desperate for “bisexual teen” stories; their YA imprint needed diversity, and my books fit the bill, whether or not they actually liked them.

During my short time working with JMS Books, I’ve felt valued, and like my team is excited to put out a product they’re proud of. That makes me proud of it all over again.

I wish younger-me had shopped around a little bit more before jumping into bed with the first publisher that looked her way. Today, I have the confidence to do right by her “weird little thriller” debut, which is why I am so happy to announce the rerelease of my first novel.

Out of Order is available for preorder as an eBook on JMS Books from now until its release date, 22 April 2023.

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