This year to celebrate turning fifty I decided to turn a bunch of my Vermont stories into a book … the book I always meant to write before I turned fifty. Big fun, lots of hours spent remembering and chronicling, and the result is Mud Season … A Waking Dream in Vermont which I am thrilled to report will be published by Norton and their imprint Countryman next fall.
Looking through books I loved for agents authors thanked and recognized, I found the estimable Rosalie Siegel. Brilliant and opinionated, she famously sold William Wharton’s Birdie and Marlena de Blasi’s 1000 Days in Venice and has made Jonathan Ames an HBO star. I wrote to her. She was starting to think about retiring. But I didn’t want a young hotshot at William Morrow. I wanted smart. I wanted seasoned. The more I read and heard, the more I knew I wanted her. And somehow, over emails and phone calls, she said yes. I had an agent! Now thanks to her, I have a publisher too.
Along the way my old and dear friend Todd Porter read and edited and hung my sentences on scaffolding that started to resemble a book. He’d ask for more of this, maybe less of that, and now as we launch this little Vermonty franchise he is touching up the second book. If you need a book doctor I recommend this gentle thorough guy who will listen to your voice and make it loud and clear.
I would like to thank all of you for reading here and sharing this journey with me. I am ever grateful to have had your presence and your friendship.
And now I have a favor to ask too. If you have a blog or a FB or Twitter will you please share the news with your community? Mud and I are gonna need all the publciity we can get!
Mud Season by Ellen Stimson Fall 2013!
I am just silly happy over here
Comments
Jamie
I knew this would happen and I cannot wait until your book tour brings you to Denver! 🙂
So many congratulations–fantastic news, indeed!!
Maria (Bia)
i will.
i would be more than happy to do so.
i would like to personally pre-order a book.
katydid
I’m in —I’ll tell everybody at my blog.
I knew this would hapen. I come here for Internet happiness and now I will get a whole book of it!
Congratualtions Ellen. This is a big deal
\Molls
Fantastic Mrs P.
WOOHOO!!!!!!
beesknees
Mud Season. Wow. I have loved reading here and I would like to order two copies!
Lynn Silence
YES!!! I knew it would go! I intend to order at least half a dozen copies for the eating group! And if you come to St. Louis and don’t see me long enough to autograph all my mcopies, my revenge will be too terrible to contemplate!
catalina
I am so happy for you Mrs P. You have been brining me cocoa by the fire every winter now for the last three or four. You are one of my favorite things when I make the list. I carry things you;ve said on little scraps of paper in my purse. I cannot wait for the book. I ‘ll buy them for every mom I know. Becuase Vermont? Sure. But really these are stories of how a family copes and meets challenges and gets up and loves each other for another day.
I cannot wait for this book!
Meredith Henderson
Whooeee!!!!!!
Count me among the thrilled
Conratulatons Ellen. Big news
beesknees
Nobody is surprised by this you know. We have all been clamoring for just this news
abigail Mae Husdon
Congratulations my dear. This is wonderful news. Please come to my bookstore and do a reading. I will bring all my freinds. It is the Odyessey in South Hadley Massachusetts. We will welcome you with great warmth and you will be beloved here!
Starrlife
Well gee whiz Mrs P.
I am blown away. I always knew you were classy company and while I don’t have huge following I will pull my butt out of mothballs and put up a post and link for you. If you have something for Facebook I’ll put one there too! Congrats!
Starrlife
Just asked for your FBI friendship. Initials LLN 🙂
hannah
yo wheres the photo credit MOM!
Photo courtesy of Hannah Rushing.
Janice McArdle
Hello,
I am a library in charge of a book group. We choose “Mud Season” for our April book.
Do you ever come to Western MA? Our town is located near Amherst & Northampton MA. If you do, we would love to have you! Our very active and well attended book group will meet on Thurs. April 10 at 6:30pm.
I am seeking book discussion questions for “Mud Season”. Do you have any?
Thank you very much,
Janice McArdle
Granby Free Public Library