Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Bond.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Sara. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’ve always been a writer, but as of this year, I can finally say I am an author. My debut novel only just released in February, but I’ve been working on it for years. I started this particular novel when my son was born in 2014 and began querying agents and publishers in late 2016. Not getting the responses I wanted, I revamped the work with advice from some amazing mentors, began again in 2018, and was ready to give up by 2019. Then, at the urging of my critique partners, I tried one last push concentrating on small publishers who are open to unagented writers. I got a lot of interest and sold my book early last year.
GRAVITY’S HEIR is a fast-paced space opera with a lot of political themes, found family dynamics, and questions about identity and legacy. I typically write genre literature–science fiction and fantasy–though I have aspirations to write widely over the course of my career. I’m drafting an urban fantasy about a half-fairy bartender working in a secret bar off the Chattahoochee, but I also have outlines for a gothic romance that I’m pitching as a female/female Jane Eyre. As my kids get older and I have more time to focus on writing, I hope to publish at least a book or two a year to get through all the ideas in my head.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Publishing is an incredibly difficult industry, even for the people who get everything right on the first try. I did not get everything right. My debut novel is actually my sixth completed novel, and at least four of those that came before will never see the light of day.
Writing a novel is deceptively difficult. There are so many different elements you have to balance, from plot and pacing to character arcs and to develop your own voice. The worst part is, no one can really teach you how to do it. You can’t just learn each of the skills involved and miraculously create a novel on your first try. Instead, you have to start several bad novels, give up, try again, write a terrible one all the way through, edit it, curse it, burn it, start again, give up, put a pox on publishing, realize you can’t simply quit, and recommit to it all over. You learn to write by writing, and it all takes so much time to learn your own process.
Even when you master all of that, you then have to navigate publishing. Writing queries, pitching agents, crafting synopses–all of these require different skills than those you mastered to write the novel in the first place. Everyone I know hates writing synopses, and yet they’re a vital part of selling and pitching your novel, first to agents, and then to publishers.
If you refuse to give up, find a group of supportive friends and fellow writers, and finally snag an agent or publisher, then the real fun begins. Now you get to find out if you have the marketing skills actually to sell your book to the rest of the world.
The short answer (too late) is that publishing is never a smooth road. It involves a LOT of rejection and a lot of stubborn resolves to push through that rejection. I received over 140 rejections for this one book alone, and it’s getting published. I don’t even know how many I’ve received over my entire writing career, and I can’t count how many more are ahead of me. Thankfully, I’m stubborn, and I have too many stories to give up.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I write science fiction and fantasy that is decidedly political in nature. That doesn’t mean I’m using my books as thinly-veiled treatises on the issue du jour or putting for characters that are mere mouthpieces for my political stances.
My background is as an academic. I pursued a Ph.D. in political theory at the University of Virginia, and my interest has always been the deep political questions that forge a community. How do people identify as a group? What makes them act together? What makes them act against each other? How do they respond to trauma, and how do they move forward as a people when there are deep divisions between them?
I discovered quickly in my academic journey, though, that I wasn’t interested in the data and statistics that pointed toward answers, as much as I was in the individual stories and the questions themselves. What better way to explore those questions than through fiction?
Whatever I write, whether it’s space adventure stories about war or making deals with the devil in Little Five Points, my stories always have a deep political undercurrent. I may not have answers, but I take the questions seriously.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I think getting a book deal is almost always a matter of getting your book in the right hands at the right time, and there’s a lot of luck in that. That said, I think you increase your chances by getting your book into as many hands as possible.
An element of luck or serendipity is always going to play a part in when success comes your way. Whether it’s getting the book deal, striking a reviewer at just the right moment, or getting a pitch noticed on social media, success in publishing is sometimes just a matter of cutting through the noise and having the right story for the moment.
But even more, about it is keeping at it. Rejections are almost never personal. Heck, I have to put down books of good friends of mine because I’m just not in the right mood for the story they’re telling. However, if you keep at it, keep telling more and better stories, then eventually you find that there is someone out there who is dying to read your book. That’s not luck, though. The only steel-reinforced spine that keeps you moving toward success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.saratbond.com
- Email: authorsaratbond@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sara.h.bond/
- Facebook: https://fb.me/AuthorSaraTBond
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/saramuse
Image Credit:
Matt Lane Headshots
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