It’s Finally Happening: Sealing the Deal

Yesterday I signed a contract with University of Alberta Press to publish my science memoir, Meltdown: The Making and Breaking of a Field Scientist. It’s scheduled to come out in spring of 2025. It’s been a long five-year journey, from writing and rewriting to writing again.

In early 2019, while on a bipolar high, I decided I wanted to write a book. I don’t have a full-time job but I do have a full-time illness, and I didn’t know how far I’d get with writing just an hour or two every few days. But I decided I could just sit down, start writing, and see where it got me.

I joined a number of writing-related groups on Facebook, and learned from other people what the process was like. Writers talked about putting together a book proposal, whether or not you needed a proposal if you were writing memoir, how much you should reveal in your book and how much you should leave out to avoid offending people, what to do once you had a full manuscript in hand. They talked about agents and advances and publicity and marketing. I soaked it all up and put it in the back of my mind, ready to use if I ever got to the point of publication.

After getting the first three chapters done I decided not to go the agent route, having heard too many stories of people contacting hundreds of agents in the quest to find someone to represent them. I didn’t have it in me mentally to keep getting up after so many rejections. I decided I’d submit to one agent whom I thought would be a perfect fit, and to publishers that took manuscripts directly from writers. I realized I’d have to write a proposal with which to sell my book.

In late 2020, I put the book writing aside to pull together a proposal document that included:

• A synopsis of my book.
• A summary of what would be in each chapter.
• A resume.
• Comparable titles: books that complemented mine published in the last five years or so. In the final iteration of my proposal from 2021, these included Finding the Mother Tree, The Arbornaut, Lab Girl, In Search of the Canary Tree, and others.
• Some sense of my target audience and how I would market my book.
• Two sample chapters—in my case the first two of the book.

I sent it out to the one agent and a few publishers and got three bites. One was from University of Toronto Press, where the acquisitions editor was intrigued by my book but wanted me to rewrite the first sample chapter into something more engaging. I did that twice and then he disappeared, having been suddenly laid off from the press. That was the end of that relationship! I also got a we-might-be-interested response from an editor at Island Press. After several back-and-forth email discussions, we decided that my book wasn’t a good fit for their catalogue, and we parted ways amicably. Finally, I submitted to Greystone Press, and while they said the proposal was good, there were issues with marketing (I’m guessing they were wondering who they would sell it to).

In between I kept writing, slowly and painstakingly finishing a few more chapters over time.

One of my writing buddies suggested I try a university press, so in September of 2022 I submitted the first 20 pages of the book to the acquisitions editor at University of Alberta Press. She loved it and asked for my chapter summaries. I was so glad I had a proposal document ready to go, which contained all of my chapter summaries in neat paragraphs. After she read the summaries, we agreed that I would submit my final manuscript to her in spring of 2023 and we’d go from there.

I continued working on the manuscript over the winter and spring, taking long breaks when I wasn’t feeling well. I worked with an editor friend to help shape the book into what I had imagined it to be when I first started writing it. I asked beta readers—colleagues and friends—to comment on whether or not the book was readable, where there were holes, what I could describe more clearly, etc. They gave me great feedback which I incorporated into the manuscript before submitting it to the editor in May of 2023.

Then the waiting began. I had to wait for the editor to read it and make sure it was ready for peer review. Then I had to wait for the peer reviewers to respond. The peer reviews came in in December, and they were better than I could have hoped for. I’ve put some of the quotes in the image above, but others include:

“A gripping style and contents will lead readers to read this book cover-to-cover. Storytelling and truth telling bind the book together as a memoir that never stops driving forward with intrigue. I found it was hard to put it down.”

“Boon is a writer who can observe field work like Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac, convey anguish like Patricia Van Tighem in The Bear’s Embrace: A True Story of a Grizzly Bear Attack, and open up silences like Maria Coffey in Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow: The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure.”

“It does not put an unwarranted positive spin on situations and while this can be uncomfortable at times, it makes the book much more powerful for it.”

“I will buy this as soon as it’s available, even though I have already read it.”

The editor and I put together a package for the Press Committee and I waited anxiously for their decision. As you already know, it was a resounding yes. The editor said they had a lively discussion about the book for almost an hour, which says a lot about their interest in it.

I’m proud of myself for persevering even though I had to take many breaks when my mental health didn’t cooperate. For just writing—getting the words on the page and rearranging and rewriting them as necessary to form them into an actual book. For going it alone without an agent. I’m grateful that my spouse was okay with me using up my spoons—however few I had—on writing instead of doing more fun things (Spoonies are people who struggle with chronic illness. The term is based on a blog post by Christine Miserandino.). I’m also grateful for my friends who cheered me on from the beginning.

There’s still a lot of work ahead, but next year I’ll hold that book in my hands and be glad that I persevered and got my story into the world.