Shelley Noble: On Writing in a New Genre
New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble discusses the serendipitous Google search that led to her new historical novel, The Tiffany Girls.
Shelley Noble is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Whisper Beach and Beach Colors. Other titles include Stargazey Point, Breakwater Bay, Forever Beach, Lighthouse Beach, and four spin off novellas. A former professional dancer and choreographer, she lives at the Jersey shore and loves to discover new beaches and indulge in her passion for lighthouses and vintage carousels. Shelley is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Find her on Facebook and Instagram.
In this post, Shelley discusses the serendipitous Google search that led to her new historical novel, The Tiffany Girls, her advice for other writers, and more!
Name: Shelley Noble
Literary agent: Kevan Lyon; Marsal Lyon Literary Agency
Book title: The Tiffany Girls
Publisher: William Morrow
Release date: May 9, 2023
Genre/category: Women’s Historical Fiction
Previous titles: 30 titles, the latest are A Secret Never Told (A Lady Dunbridge Gilded Age Manhattan Mystery) and Summer Island (contemporary mainstream women’s fiction)
Elevator pitch for the book: A gripping story of the real-life “Tiffany Girls,” a fascinating and largely unknown group of women artists behind Tiffany’s most legendary glassworks. Brought together by chance, driven by their desire to be artists, these “Tiffany Girls” will break the glass ceiling of their era and for working women to come.
What prompted you to write this book?
Serendipity. I was researching early-20th-century psychoanalysis for a Lady Dunbridge Gilded Age mystery, scrolling through site after site, when an article about the Tiffany girls appeared in the Google feed. Intrigued, I clicked through and read the article. I was totally hooked.
I immediately put it in my “Write This” file. I began the research on it a few months later.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I began serious research in the summer of 2021. Wrote an extended synopsis and 100 pages over two or three months. Since I was entering a new genre, my agent and I wanted to give editors a good example of my writing.
While I continued to work on the story, my agent sent the pages and synopsis out. It went to auction fairly quickly. I turned in the completed third draft around March of 2022. It will be published May 9, 2023.
The idea for the story grew, more than changed, as I wrote it. By spending so much time cleaning the first 100 pages and living with the protagonists longer than I normally would, I learned more about them than I would have with a tighter schedule and was even able to incorporate more of the girls into the story.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I’ve had a number of books published, and they were all a little different, but I pretty much knew what my schedule would be, and what the general pub date would be. But this is the first in a new genre for me, so there was quite a bit of juggling to find a place for it in the established publishing schedule that we could all agree on. It was kind of a nail biter, but with a little rearrangement and outside the box thinking, we landed on May pub date, which made us all happy.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
There are always surprises I think, but in The Tiffany Girls, I became intrigued with the girls as a group, even the ones who weren’t in the book. And I became totally enraptured with the process of making the glass and the windows and lamps and other items.
I would find myself writing at length about the glass almost as if it were one of the main characters. And in a way, it is. Of course, a lot of it had to be edited out.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope that my girls will speak to others, not just about the period, the art, and the importance of women in history, but to show that it doesn’t matter if you receive credit or payment, or whether everyone knows your name or your work, like the Tiffany Girls, in obscurity and anonymity. Your work becomes a part of the wonderful mosaic of history. And it is important.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Learn your craft; to a writer it’s of the first importance. Keep studying and honing your work. But most importantly: Pay attention.
I could have missed that entry about the Tiffany girls while scrolling down the hundred or so sites on early psychoanalysis. But I was lucky. The buds of story ideas are everywhere around us.
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
