Revising the Dream
PUBLISHING A DEBUT NOVEL IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD
BACK in 2019, when I signed the publishing contract for my debut novel, Body of Stars, launch party ideas were already springing to mind. Perhaps I’d host the launch at a planetarium, which would complement the celestial theme of the book. I could serve sparkling rosé to mimic a fictional drink in the novel, along with star-shaped cookies and a cake bearing an image of the book cover. Finally, because my novel’s premise surrounds fortune-telling—it’s set in a world where women’s bodies predict the future—I could hire tarot and palm readers for the evening. Publishing my first novel was a lifelong dream come true following years of hard work, and I wanted to celebrate that with no less than stars and champagne, as well as the friends and community who helped me along the way.
Then 2020 happened. When the pandemic hit I didn’t dwell on the fate of my novel at first. Body of Stars wasn’t scheduled to publish until March 2021, a full year away, and surely the pandemic couldn’t last that long, right? Even as weeks of quarantine turned into months, I stubbornly kept hope alive. The state of the world was so dire and unsettling that to imagine a future in which my book launch could still happen was to imagine a future at all—one where literary events continued to thrive and I could gather with friends and family in person.
As the social distancing, canceled events, and existential panic dragged on, I gradually started to accept that my launch
