Guest post and giveaway: Ellen Meister

I’m thrilled to welcome Ellen Meister, the author of The Other Life, here today.  After reading her post, I’m really excited about Ellen’s latest book, The Other Life, and I think you will be too.

Brand X

Branding. It’s marketing 101 stuff–attaching an idea, feeling or image to a particular product or service. And it works. When you’re in the supermarket, you know whether you’re going to reach for the Kashi or the Kelloggs, for the Pepperidge Farms bag or the Nabisco box.

The same holds true for authors. Novelists who have been successfully branded are easily recognized by the bookstore browser. You generally know what you’re getting when you reach for a title by Stephen King, Jane Green, Robin Cook, Kristin Hannah, James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, Tess Gerritsen, etc. That’s not to say the reader won’t be surprised, delighted or sometimes even (heaven forbid!) disappointed by a book from one of these great authors, but there’s an instant recognition and expectation.

Since I have a marketing background, you might think I’d have a knack for branding myself as an author. Unfortunately, my grade average here is F.

When I wrote my first book, I didn’t start out with a genre in mind, and certainly didn’t think about branding. In fact, even when I finished, I didn’t know what genre the book was. All I knew was that I had written a novel that touched me deeply and made me laugh out loud, and I hoped others would feel the same.

Fortunately, after a long struggle, I found an agent who thought it was terrific, and she, in turn found an editor at HarperCollins who agreed. A few years later SECRET CONFESSIONS OF THE APPLEWOOD PTA made its debut. The “package” gave a frothier image than I had hoped for, but I understood. Marketing is marketing. And fortunately, readers and critics seemed to get it.

My next book, THE SMART ONE–a sister story with a lot of humor and a bit of darkness–was marketed in a similar way. I suppose I was close to being branded as an author who could tickle a funny bone.

Then I got an idea for a novel that was a 180-degree turn from these first two books. It was a high concept story with elements of magical realism and some darkly intense emotional terrain. And although this, too, had some humor, I knew that there was no way it could be branded as frothy entertainment.

But I was undeterred. The story–about a pregnant woman who has the ability to cross through a portal from her happily married life with her husband and son to the single life she would have lived had she made other choices–took hold of me and wouldn’t let go … especially when I realized her mother was dead in one life and alive in the other.

I fell in love with my main character and her struggle. I wanted to write it. I needed to write it. But I was worried. What would my agent say? Would she tell me I had to stick with what I had been doing? Would she say she couldn’t sell me as this kind of author?

Fortunately, she loved the book. And much to my astonished delight, so did the publishing community–the book sold at auction to Putnam/Berkley, and THE OTHER LIFE came out last February in hardcover. It is now available in paperback.

There’s more. Hollywood also responded to this parallel lives story in the form of a TV series option from HBO.

Is there a lesson to be learned here about ignoring the idea of branding in favor of following your creative instincts, wherever they may lead? I don’t know. I’m certainly not as popular or successful as any of the well-branded authors. But maybe if I keep following my heart that will one day happen. At very least, I get an A in dreaming.

Ellen Meister is the author of three novels. Her most recent book, THE OTHER LIFE (Putnam/Berkley), appears on several Best Fiction of the Year lists, was singled out by the American Booksellers Association for the prestigious Indie Next List, and is under option with HBO for a television series. She currently edits manuscripts for published and aspiring authors, teaches creative writing at Hofstra University Continuing Education, does public speaking about writing-related issues, and is at work on her fourth novel FAREWELL, DOROTHY PARKER (Putnam, 2013). For more information, visit her website at ellenmeister.com.

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Thanks to the great folks at Penguin, I have one copy of THE OTHER LIFE to giveaway!  About the book:

If you could return to the road not taken, would you?

Happily married and pregnant, Quinn Braverman has an ominous secret. Every time she makes a major life decision, she knows an alternate reality exists in which she made the opposite choice-not only that, she knows how to cross over. But even in her darkest moments-like her mother’s suicide-Quinn hasn’t been tempted to slip through…until she receives devastating news about the baby she’s carrying.

The grief lures her to peek across the portal, and before she knows it she’s in the midst of the other life: the life in which she married another man, and is childless. The life in which her mother is still very much alive.

Quinn is forced to make a heartbreaking choice. Will she stay with the family she loves and her severely disabled child? Or will an easier life-and the primal need to be with her mother-win out?

To enter to win THE OTHER LIFE by Ellen Meister, simply fill out the entry form.  Contest is open to those in the US and Canada – one entry per person, please.  I will use random.org to determine the winner. Contest ends at midnight EST Saturday, December 17, 2011.   Winner will be announced on Sunday, December 18, 2011.  Comments are welcome (and appreciated) but will not get you an entry in the contest.