Hi, my name is Suki Gina. I am a publishing grunt who loves to read. After five years of reading slush piles, proofreading soccer books, and scraping by, I realized: I have observed the art of telling stories all my life? Why not join in the fun? Amazing as it may seem, even the best book in the world was written by a mere human being. If I stay creative and honest, what harm can it do? "Don't quit your day job, Suki!" Well, my day job and my... night job?... gel together so well, the only way I can tell them apart is which way I was going on the train when I got to my desk. Well, that used to be the only way... now I'm at the home desk all day, every day! Nobody ever expected any of this, but hey... the unexpected is the first element of the best novels!
So I tried and I tried... and I failed and I failed. Most of my friends said my first attempt was hard to read, so I scrapped it and started over. They said that one was a little better, but they still wouldn't have read it if they didn't know me. Shit, this is hard! But I gave it a third go, and... well, let's just say that honest friends are the best friends. Because after all the tough love they gave me on my first attempt, the encouragement that they gave me this time around was something I knew was real.
... Not that I didn't have to rewrite it ten times anyway! But by the eighth and ninth rewrites, I was locked in the house for the sake of public health, so what did it matter? My social life can wait. So delete delete delete, scribble scribble scribble, on the computer, writing longhand when I got stuck, and before long notebooks packed with frustration had been tossed all over my bedroom floor.
Finally, my best friend (and first editing mentor at the publishing house!) told me she wouldn't be too angry to find this in her reading pile. She gets mad when the slush pile reader lets the garbage get through, so I took this as a sign that finally, at long last, my book was good to go... shop to other publishers.
So! At long last, my first novel is called Brett and Leslie. It is nearing completion and looking for (another) good editor! What I lack in experience as an author, I have in experience as a publishing-house and newspaper peon. I know how many ways there are to skin a cat, how many first tries lie behind a perfect sentence. And if you don't believe me, give me a read, once I get a chance.
