I AM HERE to tell you about the time I rage-puked with envy over another author’s success.
When my first novel came out in summer 2011, I knew very few other writers, so the ones I met that year became not only my instant friends, but also—it was inevitable—the bars against which I measured myself.
While that first book, The Borrower, didn’t light the world on fire, it did respectably well, and by the end of that year I was feeling pretty okay about things. Then—and no one had prepared me for this—the lists began.
That November/December onslaught of “Best Novels of the Year!” and “Twenty Best Books We Read!” lists is useful for readers and booksellers, and it’s wonderful exposure for the books they highlight. But for the vast majority of writers, those
