Frances and Emmie
Dear Friends of Frances,
Beyond the Margins 2014
--
We hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving and have had a chance amidst the bustle to reflect on your blessings.
It was a year ago exactly that Frances was in the hospital after her unexpected aneurysm. I visited her for the second time there the Friday after Thanksgiving. None of us need reminding that she died that night, in the early hours of Saturday, November 26.
You all know well how upbeat, kind and funny she was. How modest! Did you know she won THREE Emmy Awards for her TV writing and producing? We also know how she unfailingly supported and encouraged us all. Annemarie O’Brien, Linden McNeilly, Helen Pyne, Christine Dowd, Sharry Wright, and I (Frances’s writing group, “Beyond the Margins”) decided very quickly that we wanted to honor Frances by getting her remarkable writing and diverse stories to young readers. She told us that she had never or rarely encountered books in her own childhood about Americans who looked like her or were like her and her family.
Frances’s dream of publication was never realized, despite her and her agent’s hard work. She came SO close repeatedly, including enthusiastic editors, acquisition committees, as well as a sale and a contract at a major international publisher for her wonderful story, LILY LO AND THE WONTON MAKER. As we all know, Egmont abruptly closed US operations, leaving Frances’s story as well as many others, stranded. These defeats took their toll on Frances but she never gave up.
With the help of her agent and friends such as Lynn Hazen and Ellen Yeomans, we explored the possibility of posthumous traditional publication of LILY LO, to no avail. We considered self-publishing until we learned of a hybrid publisher right here in the Bay Area: Inkshares. They publish books that attract enough pre-orders (750) to pay for editing, design, printing, and distribution of a book. Once that threshold is met, 35% of net proceeds go to the author, or in this case to Frances’s estate, and specifically her daughter Emmie’s education fund.
We are officially starting the campaign today to earn 750 pre-orders. That’s a lot of orders.
We need your help.
Please consider pre-ordering at least one book or e-book. And spreading the word, along with the pre-order link. We've included promo copy, synopses, bio, etc.
If you have any photos or stories of Frances, it would be spectacular to share them, too. You’re also welcome to simply re-post our posts or re-tweet our tweets.
We promise it’s not hard to do this for such a book worth reading, and an author worth celebrating.
With love and gratitude,
Beyond the Margins
Beyond the Margins 2014
Ann Jacobus Kordahl
Author of
Romancing the Dark in the City of Light (2015)
from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Griffin/Macmillan
