Hurry Up & Wait: Author Tessa Wegert’s Publishing Journey
Tessa Wegert
Author, Mother, Martial Artist, Bibliomaniac
What book changed your life?
Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story. It was the first book that completely transported me, and in retrospect, it was the book that made me fall in love with fiction.
What would you say to your older self?
Be patient. Don’t rush it. Trust that everything will work out. I wish I could say this to my past self, too.
What makes you feel like a real grown-up?
Borrowing a pair of sneakers from my youngest kid...whose feet are about to be bigger than mine.
What’s the weirdest thing in your tote bag?
Pebbles from the beach and a handful of sand.
Back to her future in fiction
Writing fiction started out as a hobby for me. I’d always been a voracious reader, primarily of mysteries and thrillers, and had written short stories and poetry as a teen, but over the years I got caught up in my work as a freelance journalist and content developer, and fiction fell by the wayside. It wasn’t until I had very young kids that I realized I missed having that creative outlet and got serious about writing a novel. The timing wasn’t exactly ideal, but I started getting up at 5 a.m. to put some words down before the kids woke up. I’m not a morning person, so the fact that I was able to stick with that routine was enough to convince me I should see where those words led.
A sleuth is born.
It was a perfect storm of inspiration: I had decided to try writing a mystery, and was in the process of rereading some classic crime fiction. I had just gotten back from visiting the Thousand Islands region of Upstate New York, and over the course of a few days I reread Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and played a game of Clue with my kids.
I’d already been toying with the idea of setting a book in the Thousand Islands, which I visited regularly, and knew I wanted to write a strong female protagonist. The setting, a classic detective story with a contemporary twist, and a grand old manor full of suspects all came together to create Death in the Family.
A sense of place.
Setting and atmosphere play a huge part in my books, and most of the action takes place on the islands in the St. Lawrence River between New York State and Ontario, Canada. It’s the place I first met my future husband’s family, and I was immediately smitten with the idea of staying in a house on a windswept little island in the middle of a wide, wild river. During the Gilded Age, the islands were a magnet for titans of industry and New York and Philadelphia’s urban elite, and the families behind Macy's, the Pullman Company, and Singer Corporation all had extravagant summer homes there. All that history, coupled with the sense of isolation you get sleeping on a small private island, made it the perfect place to set a mystery series.
Mysteries and thrillers are the very definition of escapist fiction because they can immerse you so completely in a story that’s fundamentally different from your own life. Puzzle-box narratives, for example, can plunge you into a thrilling and exotic plot that whisks you off to the rugged Irish countryside, the coast of Tasmania, or a historic island estate on the Canadian border. If you ask me, a book that sends a chill up your spine is the best kind of beach read.
Process as progress.
I’d been told by my agent and other authors that the publishing world was all “hurry up and wait,” but I didn’t quite believe it. I do now. I tell people my lucky number is ten: I wrote fiction for ten years before coming up with the idea for Death in the Family, and my first and second books were published within ten months of each other. All that waiting was hard, but now I’m grateful to have some practice books under my belt. These days, I have to write a lot more quickly.
I’m a big proponent of writing every day. It isn’t always easy, and there are times when sitting down to write might be impossible, but I’ve found that writing in fits and starts is much less productive and more frustrating than adopting a regular routine. Eventually, that comes naturally—and once you get deep enough into the story, you’ll probably be snatching up every free minute you can get.
Tessa’s summer reading (short)list
I’ve got a couple of debut thrillers on my nightstand right now, including Aggie Blum Thompson’s I Don’t Forgive You, which just came out, and Hannah Morrissey’s Hello, Transcriber, which publishes in November. I’m also excited to read Laura McHugh’s What’s Done in Darkness and Paula McLain’s When the Stars Go Dark.
