Move Up the Corpse
Did an evening with Margaret Atwood and my daughter inspire Known Order Girls?
May 30 is the second anniversary of the release of my novel, Known Order Girls. I’m only a little bummed about it not doing nearly as well as Near Death by a Thousand Cuts: A Humorous Memoir of Misfortune, which released a year prior, but a bookiversary is a bookiversary, and must be celebrated. I think it’s well done, and I’m not alone. The sales numbers, or lack thereof, don’t take away from that, and it’s a book of which I am quite proud.
It’s origin story is interesting, I think, too.
The idea for this book came to me while watching my children play in the lobby of the Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara, Ontario. Fitbits were all the rage at the time. As I checked my steps, I heard a staff member bark orders to people so they could make room for children to sit in front of the creepy animatronic tree and woodland creatures for story time. My daughter, Avery, four years older than her brother, A.J., explained to him what was going on.
“Should we do what he says?” he asked her.
“No, we’re not in the way. We can keep colouring.”
I modelled the main character, Katherine Webb, and her little brother, Chadwick on my daughter and son, to whom I dedicated the book.
The thing is, beyond a rough sketch of an idea and a single paragraph ending, I had nothing.
(Process Note: I tend to get story ideas that are not well defined on the whole, but have a lasting image, and ending, more or less decided, so I almost always start a new project by writing the ending first, and then I go back to the beginning and write the best story I can to get me there.)
Then, I had the good fortune and pleasure of taking my daughter to see Margaret Atwood talk in Kitchener, Ontario. Spending the evening with my daughter listening to Atwood talk is my second favourite literary fan moment (after getting to eat lunch with Chuck Wendig at a writing talk he gave in Toronto a decade ago). As it turns out, the Atwood talk was also May 30, exactly five years prior.
Atwood covered myriad topics, both personal and writing-related, though it was sometimes hard to separate the two. She is remarkably well-spoken, intelligent and informed, and I particularly enjoy her sense of humour. If I’m being honest, with the exception of The Handmaid’s Tale, I am more a fan of her essays and op eds than her novels for this reason, but I digress. She is a literary legend and I became a better writer by listening to her speak for a couple of hours. The fact I got to share the moment with my daughter made it all the more special.
One piece of writing advice that Atwood imparted on the audience was, “Move up the corpse.” She spoke in the context of a murder mystery, but noted that you could apply similar logic across most genres. It got my wheels turning about how to start this story that was nothing more than a few scribbles in Notepad on my computer. I had my “move up the corpse” moment.
This was 2019, and by early 2020 I had a rudimentary “beat sheet” (tips cap to the late Blake Snyder and his book Save the Cat) drawn up for the book. Then, I got a deal from Masterclass and, after taking Aaron Sorkin’s, I sat down with Margaret Atwood for several hours, paying attention, taking notes, and saving document after document to my computer so I could review offline.
Come November 2020 I had a first draft of just over 50,000 words, and was thoroughly stuck. I put it in a drawer, as it were, and let it have a time out to think about what it had done and reflect on the pain it had caused me.
Then, in February 2021, I made this post in a Facebook writing group:
The long, slow process of switching POV began, and lo, it sucked balls. So much so that once I’d switched from third to first person for the 50,000+ words in existence, I had nothing left in the tank.
Fast forward all the way to the summer of 2022, and a friend of mine came to me with an idea for a book. A memoir of sorts about all the times I’ve damaged myself. Inspired by an incident that occurred when we were colleagues, and later included in the third Darwin Awards book, I wrote Near Death by a Thousand Cuts: A Humorous Memoir of Misfortune in less than 30 days that November. It released on April 1, 2023.
A few months later, I re-branded Hard Truth and re-released it as Retribution: The Mogul, further bumping KOG down the list.
Another November rolled around and I was in a bit of a groove. I took the opportunity to hammer out the rest of the story. I wrote 45,000 words in a month, while working full time, and managing personal and familial obligations on top of everything. I was pleased. And the twist ending that appears on the last page before the epilogue? I didn't even know about it until I put the words on the page. (It surprised me, and I'm hope it surprises you.)
Rewrites and self-editing came in the months that followed, and then I handed it over to editor Gari Strawn. While she was emptying The Red Pen of Doom, I started working on the cover.
I commissioned the wonderfully talented Carol Bloomgarden to paint a picture described in the book and used it as the original cover. As it turns out, that cover, while gorgeous, was more appropriate after someone read the book. So in January 2025 I changed the cover to something more genre appropriate. There were fewer than 100 copies printed of the original cover, and only 5 remain (NB: it has a few embarrassing typos in it, for which I feel great shame, but think of it as even more of a collector's item). I loved the artwork so much the original is framed on my wall and I opened a Redbubble store so you can get the design on anything from stickers to shower curtains, and sell bookmarks and postcards on my website (if you buy a postcard, I'll send you an extra one to mail back to me. I'm collecting postmarks and stamps from all over).
With the artwork in hand (no thanks to some spectacularly high duty fees to get it across the border), I had it scanned at a local printing place that has a large professional scanner, and sent it to my cover and layout designer, Linda Ryan.
Then, on May 30, 2024, Known Order Girls hit the shelves. I gave the ebook away for free for the first five days, and a couple hundred people picked it up, but after that, sales barley qualified as lukewarm.
That said, reviews from readers have been overwhelmingly positive, with 97% of the 34 ratings either four or five stars. I made Tales of Whoa cry, so that was nice, and several people have been hassling me on my Facebook page about a sequel (don't worry, it's coming! I think I'll write it this autumn and shoot for a release in 2027, ADHD willing).
That gets us all up to speed. Happy 2nd bookiversary to Known Order Girls. Links to everything will follow the subscribe button. If you become a paid subscriber you'll get three free draft copy ebooks (my upcoming suspense trilogy, The ‘No’ Conspiracies) as well as access to first draft writing from my upcoming nonfiction book, Can I Have a Pencil? (which I guess I have to finish before I start on the KOG sequel).
What does “move up the corpse” actually mean?