Breaking In: January/February 2025

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Single Player

(Sapphic rom-com, January, Alcove Press)

“When romance-loving Cat Li and no-nonsense Andi Zhang are forced to work together to add love interests to the video game they’re developing, tensions run high, proving the biggest fights—and best love stories—happen out-of-game.”

Writes from: Boston, MA.

Pre-Player: What led up to this book: playing an absurd number of video games during the pandemic. I became really interested in the medium in 2021 and how singularly immersive it is, and wanted to write a novel about a protagonist who lets that immersion seep into her real life when she tries to apply video game logic to her relationships.

Time frame: Even though I’m not usually a fast drafter, I wrote Single Player back in 2022 over the course of three months or so.

Enter the agent: My agent is the fantastic Abby Saul of the Lark Group, who plucked me out of the obscurity that is the slush pile.

Biggest surprise: I’m the type of person who will sweat the small stuff and let it ruin an entire day of writing. Does that comma belong there? Yes? No? Until I figure out the right answer, I can’t possibly write the next sentence. But going through the process of getting Single Player out into the world has taught me that publishing can be supportive without being punitive and that other people will catch and fix those kinds of details. They’ll let me know that all my angsting over commas was for naught since I got it wrong anyway. Hopefully, moving forward, I can let go a bit more and increase the velocity with which I write.

What I did right: The only thing I can confidently say I did right was to keep writing. So much of this industry is about timing and luck, and so many incredible stories will never see the light of traditional publishing’s day because of factors that can’t be controlled. The only thing we writers can do is write, and also remember that if we “succeed,” it’s at least partially because we (or our words) were in the right place at the right time.

What I would have done differently: There was a while when it was tough for me to consume any piece of media—books, music, movies TV shows, and, of course, video games—and enjoy it without thinking about how I could learn from it to better myself as a storyteller. I get really obsessive when I’m working on a manuscript, and it’s hard not to treat reading other authors’ works as a form of study as opposed to a form of relaxation. Looking back, I would’ve tried to do a better job of separating my writer’s brain from my audience member’s brain. How, though, remains a mystery.

Platform: I didn’t have much of a social media presence before my deal and still don’t. Largely, I post things that make me happy and reflect my real-life interests—usually bad pictures of good food and snippets of nerdy people playing nerdy games. As a result, I have a pretty uncurated and scattershot (but authentic!) feed.

Advice for writers: Intuit what advice to ignore. When I first started writing again in my late twenties after a long hiatus, I learned about avoiding adverbs and the words “just” and “that” and utilizing no more than one flashback every five chapters. The “feedback” drove me bonkers and really slowed down my writing in the early years, along with making me feel like a massive imposter.

Advice is situational. It doesn’t apply to everyone or every piece of writing. I still remember my elementary school teacher informing me I should “Never start a sentence with the word but.” That rule I break with abandon these days.

Next up: Getting the next novel out. The world still needs more sapphic rom-coms featuring POC leads and love interests.

Website: TaraTai.com

Helen of Troy, 1993: Poems

(Poetry, January, Scribner)

“Part myth retelling, part character study, Helen of Troy, 1993 reimagines the Homeric Helen as a dissatisfied housewife in 1990s small-town Tennessee, exploring questions of social rigidity, isolation, and claiming and retaining agency over your own choices and your own narrative.”

Writes from: Memphis, T.N.

Pre-Helen: I’ve been writing poetry for years, publishing individual poems in literary journals and magazines, on themes ranging from religious grief to killer mermaids to reckoning with the South and my place in it. I wasn’t actively trying to write a full-length collection … until Helen of Troy marched onto my page and introduced herself, and all of a sudden I couldn’t stop writing until she’d said her piece.

Time frame: I wrote Helen poems off and on for about 18 months. When Scribner picked up the book, I thought it was complete. How fortunate I was to have a brilliant editor in Emily Polson, who saw the need for a new poetic throughline within the narrative. It was challenging to return to the page after having mentally closed that door, but I ended up adding a sonnet crown (that is, a series of seven interlocked sonnets) that I think gives the book a dimensionality it was missing. Thank God for editors!

Enter the agent: Wonderfully, my agent Kelsey Day of Aragi, Inc. and I were friends prior to their representing me. We first bonded over word choice and craft—Kelsey is also an accomplished poet! I love their work.

Biggest surprise: I think that most poets are fairly accustomed to doing things on our own, cheerleading our own work, and forging our own paths. Even to have one other person take our work as seriously as we take it ourselves is an enormous gift. When I entered the publishing process with Scribner, I was surprised and delighted to discover a whole team of people ready to champion my book, working together with me to bring it into the world and help it find its audience. Agent, editor, marketing specialist, publicist, audio team…the list just keeps going. I feel very fortunate, and maybe a little bit like I need to keep pinching myself.

What I did right: I think “breaking in” is a tricky concept for poets! But I will say that as I was writing and placing these poems in journals and magazines (in the poetry world, we usually publish many or most of our poems this way before they end up in our final books), I had editors tell me over and over again that they loved my Helen poems not only because were they good, but also because they were kind of deliciously bizarre—they were something the editors, who read thousands of poems each year, hadn’t seen before.

What I would have done differently: In my first few years of writing poetry, I felt very isolated in my creative work. I longed for connection to other poets, but I had few local options, and I thought my work too amateurish to reach out to writers online through social media. I wish I had been braver! There are so many poets—actively publishing or just beginning to send work out—who are also looking for community. I cherish the friendships with other poets I have now, but I think forming those kinds of relationships years ago would have been transformational for me.

Platform: The poetry world tends to congregate on X. I’ve really enjoyed following other poets and keeping up with their latest releases, and this is where I also tend to post my news and updates. Being active on social media doesn’t come naturally to me, so it’s been a learning curve.

Advice for writers: Writing should be fun! Or if not fun, precisely, then at least not full of suffering. When I’m struggling in the middle of a poem and getting frustrated, I sometimes have to sit back and ask myself why I’m letting the poem torture me. Writing can be an art, a catharsis, a delight, an exploration, a labor of love—sometimes all of these at once. But when writing feels like sticking myself full of pins, I know I’m doing something wrong.

Next up: I have been having the best time exploring themes and arcs—and genres!—for my next project. More from me soon!

Website: MariaZoccola.com

No Comfort for the Dead

(Mystery, February, Crooked Lane)

“After witnessing a murder, a small-town librarian is forced to act when the local police arrest the wrong man.”

Writes from: I wrote this book in a tiny fishing village in West Cork, Ireland—I’ve lived here for nearly a decade.

Pre-Comfort: I’ve been writing since I was a kid, but I’d never considered writing a book, let alone a novel. After I moved to Ireland, I was having some success writing freelance articles for the papers, but I wanted to try something different. I started writing some short stories, peering in the windows of a fictional small village. But I kept coming back to the same characters over and over; I fell in love with them and I just wanted to see what they would do next. What they would do when faced with a concussed hedgehog, for example. And bit by bit, along the way, I found the story.

Time frame: I’ve never been able to wait until the end to edit—editing is my favorite part. I write my first draft by hand, with a ballpoint pen and a yellow legal pad. I have terrible handwriting, so typing the pages is my first round of edits. It took me about five months to get the whole manuscript in shape for submission.

Enter the agent: My research was mainly to read the Acknowledgments pages in the novels I loved. I am very lucky to have found Charlotte Seymour. The road to a deal can be a long process, or at least feel like it, with ups and downs along the way—it’s great to have found someone who really believes in my work and champions.

Biggest surprise: The whole thing! I love books, and I always have, but I’d never thought about just how much goes into creating one. So it’s been a really interesting experience. But probably the main thing is the importance of patience – even if you think you’re prepared for how long the whole process will feel, it will feel much, much longer.

What I did right: For me, finding my agent Charlotte was a big one. I had an agent previously, for a nonfiction work, and it didn’t work out—it happens! And I took my time submitting—in batches of three or four. I was able to learn from the rejections or near misses, rather than blowing through the entire list in one.

What I would have done differently: I would’ve trusted myself to attempt a novel long before I did. I spent a lot of time telling myself I couldn’t do it before I just got down to doing it.

Platform: I work in marketing, so this piece should be much easier than it actually is. It’s much harder to market yourself. But I’ve created a website and joined Goodreads. I’m also planning a Substack.

Advice for writers: Just get yourself in front of the page on a regular basis, and something will come.

If you’re like me, starting is the hardest part. Find any possible way to just get yourself to sit down, that’s 95 percent of it. Trick yourself if you have to.

Next up: I’m currently writing the second book in the series—I’m having a lot of fun getting lost in the winding roads of Castlefreke again

Website: RP-ODonnell.com

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