Should You Write the 'Book of Your Heart' Or Give the People What They Want?

A Literal Literary Loser Learns To Listen

My most recent novel, “The Nesting Dolls,” (HarperCollins 2020) takes place during three time periods: The USSR in the 1930s during Stalin’s Great Terror, the USSR in the 1970s during the Free Soviet Jewry movement, and present-day Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

Based on my reader reviews -

The first story of Daria is the strongest and most engrossing story….

I really enjoyed the first part of this book and Daria's story. I could have read a whole book about her…

I quite liked the first section about Dvora/Daria: it was set in Stalin's Russia at the time Jews and ethnic Germans were being deported from what is now Ukraine to Siberia and the Far East. Daria's struggle with men is ultimately also an issue of the time she lives in, trying to survive, and trying to help her family survive….

The first two thirds of the book was really good historical fiction….

I adored Book 1. ❤️❤️ It’s the time of Stalin in the Soviet Union. This story was heartbreaking. I easily would have given this 5 stars. I could have read more and more about Daria. Her life was fascinating and the sacrifice she made for her family, I could just go on and on (and wish this part of the story had!)💔💔

- Part One was by far the most popular.

When I was pitching my follow up project, my lovely friend, Kyra Davis, herself a NYT bestselling author, tactfully suggested: Have you ever considered writing a book set entirely in the Stalin era? Nesting Dolls was engaging from start to finish but that first story was an eye opener. I have other friends who aren't usually "family saga" readers, but when I gave them your book they read Daria's story...and then they went back and read that part again. It was so exceptionally researched and vivid and the stakes and the action kept your heart pounding the whole way through. I would think that with your expansive knowledge and understanding of the social dynamics of that place and time, a full length novel that further explored that, with similar stakes, would actually be extremely attractive to a lot of publishers. As I think we've seen, novels set in the WWII era often get a lot of love, and you would be offering a new take on that.

My 1998 romance novel, “Annie’s Wild Ride,” got terrific reviews and lots of feedback from agents and publishers that they’d like my next book to be “another Annie’s Wild Ride.”

But here’s the problem: I’d already written “Annie’s Wild Ride.” Why would I want to write it again?

“Maybe,” my husband posited, “because that’s the book people want to give you money for?” And then he sang me an excerpt from the brilliant Stephen Sondeheim’s “Putting It Together”: All they ever want is repetition/All they really like is what they know! (We’re not just book geeks, we’re also musical theater geeks!)

At the same time, author friends urged me to write the “book of my heart,” the one I feel compelled to get down on paper, the one I’m most passionate about, the one that gets my blood pumping and propels me out of bed in the morning.

What a shame nobody wanted to give me money for those.

So, almost 25 years after “Annie’s Wild Ride,” I think I’m finally getting the message.

Which is why, for my next book, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Regions” (coming November 2022), I am doing what everyone who loved the first section of “The Nesting Dolls” suggested.

Over 80% of “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region,” takes place either in Stalin’s USSR or in a World War II German prisoner of war camp. Even the “modern” section isn’t particularly modern. It’s set in 1988, the first time that, thanks to glasnost, Soviet immigrants were allowed to travel back to the country they’d left. (Something my mother and I actually did that year, just like my characters do - pictures to come!)

Did I make the right call? Is giving the people what they want the right thing to do when it comes to book marketing? Am I just being cynical? Am I selling out as an artist? Will my cynical selling out even prove a success? (How depressing would it be to sell out… and learn that still no one is buying.)

Would love to hear your thoughts!