Twenty-Nine Years to Overnight Success

In 1992, I was 16, out, the only lesbian I knew. My home state of Oregon was on fire with anti-gay hate. Queer people were beaten, shot, and firebombed. “Progressive” organizations held debates about the gay “issue.” Are gay people monsters who should be expelled from society? Pro or con? Everyone else hated us without discussion.

I was fiercely lonely. There was no internet to tie me to the queer community, but 80 miles away in Portland, there was Powell’s Books with what at that time was called a gay and lesbian section. I wanted to read every book in that section. Perhaps because those books meant so much to me, I aspired to be an author and started penning cringey vignettes about stolen kisses in moonlit cemeteries. But as much as I clung to the gay and lesbian section, I didn’t want my as-yet-unwritten books siloed on a special-interest shelf.

Back then, mainstream queer content was limited to stories about gay suffering, ending with the protagonist homeless in New York. Unless they died a pathos-inducing death. In the ’90s, it was woke to think gay people dying tragically was sad. I wanted to write fun lesbian stories with happy endings, and I wanted those stories shelved next to titles by Nora Roberts and Danielle Steel. If I’d known the term “Big Five”—the five mega-companies that rule the publishing industry—I would have said I wanted into the Big Five.

It took me 29 years to get there.

Arguably, I should have quit. Twenty-nine years is too long to spend failing at something. But working with relentless determination is in my DNA. Think of me as the border collie that, once it sets its mind to eating your sofa, will reduce the sofa to its smallest elements.

I started with an autobiography, which ended with me joyfully skipping off to Smith College. I signed with the agent who represented Barack Obama’s memoir. I saw my name in lights: First she discovered Obama, and now she’s discovered me! She couldn’t sell the book.

The list of failures and near misses goes on. My agent said my next book was too boring. I pivoted to thrillers, but she couldn’t sell them either. Three of my books were picked up by small presses, and I felt guilty for not being satisfied. Small presses start revolutions and save people’s lives. Small presses have fought to share our communities’ voices for generations. But I wanted my books at Barnes & Noble. I wanted to be so mainstream as to be stocked by Costco.

I got my first break in 2014, when a digital-only Hachette Book Group imprint published my romance Something True. Digital-only books exist in e-format or as print on demand, so there aren’t a lot of up-front costs for the publisher. They’re low risk. Still, I’d made it into the Big Five. The book was basically You’ve Got Mail with lesbians. It sold just enough copies to suggest there might be a market for lesbian romance.

My next two romances sold about 10 copies each, probably to my mother.

I was certain my publisher would break up with me, but, in a tribute to the company’s commitment to diversifying the romance genre, I was offered a print-run contract for my next book. A career-making opportunity!

I’d been imagining this moment since I was 16. I hadn’t imagined writing my breakout novel during COVID. Still, while other writers lost motivation during the pandemic, I kept at it. But when my editor read the draft, she bluntly said it was terrible. As soon as she said it, I saw she was right. I’d worked hard, but I had no clarity. She gave me six weeks to revise. I completely rewrote it. The next time we talked, she said she appreciated that I’d changed everything. It was now terrible in different ways. Like the second act in a fairy tale, I saw she was right again.

She gave me two weeks to salvage the manuscript. Where there’s two weeks, there’s hope! Except at the start of those two weeks, my father had open-heart surgery. My wife and I moved into my parents’ house to take care of them. I squeezed writing time in whenever I could. It’s a law of nature that infirmity clutters horizontal spaces, and every inch of their house was covered in pills, junk mail, and cats. There was nowhere to work except their back porch. At least I could write under the trees.

Until the wildfires started. Smoke turned the morning sky to night. Ash fell like snow. I had one week left. I wrote outside until ash clotted my keyboard. I was so stressed, I felt brutally sick. I couldn’t eat. My state was on fire. My parents were broken. I’d blown my one big chance.

The publisher titled the book Satisfaction Guaranteed.

And absolutely everyone loved it.

The Big Five only released a few queer romances in 2021. Suddenly, every podcast wanted me on as a guest. Amazon short-listed Satisfaction Guaranteed for best romance of the year. Bookstagrammers who structured their reviews as pros and cons wrote, No cons. This book is perfect.

I’d won.

Now, I can’t keep up with the bounty of queer romances released by mainstream publishers every month. Occasionally, I get jealous. But really, this is what I worked for: To be one of many. Bookstores shelve queer romances in the romance section, not the LGBTQ+ section. Young queer writers don’t have to dry heave over their laptops while falling ash blinds them. Their debut novels can soar immediately. I even celebrate them soaring higher than mine, as long as they DM me with a quick, Thanks, dude. I owe you one.

Karelia Stetz-Waters ’99 lives in Oregon with her wife of 27 years; her pug, Willa Cather; and a garden full of hummingbirds and dragonflies.