Hope in the Mail by Wendelin Van Draanen

Author:Wendelin Van Draanen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2020-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

I was in the throes of teaching an algebra class how to factor trinomials when the wall phone in my classroom started ringing. Being in the middle of a lesson, I let the call roll over to voice mail.

A short while later, the office secretary buzzed my room. “Wendelin?”

“Yes?”

“You need to pick up the phone.”

Panic engulfed me. This felt like when I’d learned about my brother’s death the year before.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Something about New York? They say it’s important. Pick up the phone.”

Mostly I was relieved that it couldn’t be anything to do with another family tragedy. None of us were in New York.

So I picked up the phone.

And I learned that my editor—who had recently moved to a different publishing house—was offering to buy all four of the Sammys at once, with an option for more.

I tried to be cool and collected on the phone, but how long had I waited for this moment? How many years?

So the minute I hung up, I did what any sensible teacher would do—I jumped up on my desk and yelled, “Yabba dabba doo!”

And all the students in my class did what any sensible kids would do—they looked at me with squinty eyes and said, “What is wrong with you?”

With that phone call, a series was born. And I didn’t really think about it at the time, but there was no guarantee that the series would be successful, or that Sammy’s adventures would continue past the fourth installment, let alone all the way to eighteen.

I’ve become increasingly aware of how fortunate I am to have been able to reach the end of the Sammy Keyes story arc, to have gotten to the last book as envisioned, to have had the heart-wrenching honor of typing the last line—something that still chokes me up to think about.

Not all series writers get that.

Out in the general population there’s an assumption that an author can continue writing books in a series for as long as they’d like. It doesn’t work that way. Factored into the continuation of the series are sales figures. If the books don’t earn their keep, the publisher will cut off future additions to the series, sometimes without warning.

So eighteen novels published across sixteen years is an anomaly, especially in present-day publishing.

Several factors contributed to my successfully reaching the end of Sammy’s story, not the least of which was having the same editor for all eighteen books. Editors tend to change publishing houses, and once yours is gone, so is the primary champion of your series. Despite assurances or intentions, things can quickly take a dead-end turn if your editor leaves.

So through sixteen years of changes in-house, through paradigm shifts in publishing and strong winds blowing hard from differing directions, my editor steadied Sammy’s ship, kept sounding her horn, and managed to get us safely to port.

If she had jumped ship, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have made it.

But back to the beginning, when we’d just set sail.

Winning the Edgar for Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief helped get Sammy noticed.

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