My 15 minutes of fame! This appeared today in the Sunday Chicago Tribune, Printers Row Journal.
A big thank you to Rick Kogan, who is a very generous man and extremely supportive of the Chicago writing community, whether it's author icons like Sara Paretsky or newbies like me.
“I like to think I have been a writer my whole life,” says Samantha Hoffman.
A big thank you to Rick Kogan, who is a very generous man and extremely supportive of the Chicago writing community, whether it's author icons like Sara Paretsky or newbies like me.
“I like to think I have been a writer my whole life,” says Samantha Hoffman.
She had written through childhood in Toledo, while working in the sales business and as a personal assistant for the last five years (one of her clients was the actor John Cusack), and through three marriages. The results were modest: a few published stories, in print and online, and a very lively blog.
This piece first ran in Printers Row Journal, delivered to Printers Row members with the Sunday Chicago Tribune and by digital edition via email.Click here to learn about joining Printers Row.
But now her first novel, "What More Could You Wish For," has been on shelves for a while, and her second, "The Ones You Left Behind," is in the hands of her agent.
"I have started to feel like a member of the community," she says, mentioning such writer friends as nonfiction author Arnie Bernstein, and novelists Renee Rosen and Kelly O'Connor McNees.
"What More …" came in the wake of her father Oscar's death in 2000. He was 90.
"He was my hero, and I was just reeling after his death," she says.
She was 50. She quit her job, sold her house in the Jefferson Park neighborhood and married a man (at the Palmer House) with whom she was not in love.
The marriage was over in a year, and she began to write her novel. The first draft was "so cathartic," she says, "and the second was much less autobiographical." That version was sent to publishers and agents. A lot of rejection letters later, she decided to self-publish and self-promote in such innovative (if not lucrative) ways as handing out free copies to people on Michigan Avenue and sending them to friends.
One of those passed the book along to a bigwig at St. Martin's. The bigwig loved it, and it was published last year. It's a love story and love triangle swirling about a compelling character named Libby Carson, who is forced to reassess what she considered a pretty good life. It might be called a coming-of-age-at-50 tale, written with style and maturity ("Night seemed hardest of all with its silence, and the sorrow that pulled at my body.")
"My dad?" she says. "He would be so proud."
Rick Kogan is a Tribune senior writer and columnist.
"What More Could You Wish For"
By Samantha Hoffman, St. Martin's Griffin, 256 pages, $14.99
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