Before and After the Book Deal

Praise for Before and After the Book Deal With humor and wisdom and the input of writers from across the literary firmament, Courtney Maum has assembled the go-to book for those looking to publish seriously and make a sustainable career of writing. I wish I could turn this book into a serum and inject it straight into my students' veins. I'll have to settle, for now, for imploring them to read this book. --Rebecca Makkai, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Great Believers Before and After the Book Deal is full of writing and publishing wisdom you either should--make that must--know as you plot your authorial future (good luck to you!) or wish you'd known before you got into this mess in the first place (well, better late than never), and Courtney Maum is an ideal guide for the whole loopy adventure: sympathetic, just cynical enough, and uproariously funny. Plus she's enlisted a battery of writers-who-have-been-there to share truths so invaluable you may find yourself, page after page, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'ing like Meg Ryan at Katz's. --Benjamin Dreyer, author of Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style This book is an act of generosity. It's filled with insight, truth, and good advice; what's more, it had me laughing often and loudly. A trove of riches. --R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries Courtney Maum's Before and After the Book Deal is to book publishing what What to Expect When You're Expecting is to parenting: an indispensable how-to guide with frank insider information that writers can't find anywhere else. Filled with anecdotes and insights that are funny, honest, and wise, it answers questions every aspiring author has but is too afraid or embarrassed to ask. A must-read for anyone who is, has been, or hopes to be a debut author, this will be my go-to gift for writer friends. --Angie Kim, author of Miracle Creek Praise for Costalegre A young girl follows her mother and a wayward group of artists into the Mexican jungle on the eve of World War II in this spare, enchanting novel . . . A lush chronicle of wealth, art, adventure, loneliness, love, and folly told by a narrator you won't be able to forget. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) When young Lara finds herself in Costalegre, living with her mother and a gaggle of nineteenth-century surrealist artists, wonder and mayhem ensues. With this slim novel, Courtney Maum has gifted her readers with a breathtaking meditation on youth, art, and the ever-mysterious bonds between mothers and daughters. Costalegre is a spectacular high-wire act that dazzles and devastates. --Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel Mesmerizing and unsettling, Costalegre is a wonder, and Courtney Maum shows herself once again to be a writer of many gifts. This is a book for anyone who's ever loved and not felt sufficiently loved in return; and for anyone who's had to try to grow up; for, that is, everyone. --R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries This story of a daughter searching for connection all around her has a sharp cutting edge, a world that changes its mood in an instant; bleak as the dregs of a wine-soaked dinner, then bullish as a house of hapless surrealists attempting to boil an egg. Memorable and meaningful, Maum's work remains with me as a reminder of love in the agony of teenage years and art in the terror of war. --Amelia Gray, author of Isadora Here is war, and here is art. And here is a child trying to become an adult in the midst of a Mexican exile. Maum's stirred a brew of careless Bohemians, fuhrers and failed art students, negligent mothers and missing museums. Costalegre is as heady, delirious, and heartbreaking as a young girl just beginning to fall in love with our world. --Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark Praise for Touch Exuberant . . . Maum's writing is easy, eager and colloquial, as oxygenated as ad copy. --The New York Times Book Review At the heart of Maum's smart, playful, satirical novel is the clash between technology and human interaction . . . As she demonstrated so well in her previous novel, [Maum] brings astute social observations to relationships, whether workplace or romantic. --The National Book Review, 1 of 5 Hot Books Maum's incisive, charming, and funny novel ebulliently champions the healing powers of touch, the living world, and love in all its crazy risks, surprises, and sustaining radiance. --Booklist (starred review) Maum . . . has such a incisive grasp of where tech and culture meet that she could add sociologist to her resume. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Praise for I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You Here we have the literary beach read--a book that pleases people who read two books a month and people who read two books a year . . . [Maum] is abundantly gifted--funny, open-hearted, adept at bringing global issues into the personal sphere . . . eventually creating that rare thing: a book for everyone. --The Washington Post Maum is funny: the kind of funny that is mean and dirty, with some good bad words thrown in. And she has a satiric eye for artsy pretension . . . Enticing. --The New York Times Book Review Courtney Maum bursts onto the scene with a hilarious and wise novel . . . Richard Haddon is one of the more lovable male characters we've encountered this season . . . You'll find yourself agog at Maum's masterful storytelling and dead-on descriptions. --Glamour Antic, sexy, satirically deft, and of course funny, this novel is also, on both the personal and political levels, smart about the bottomlessness of our capacities for self-sabotage, and moving about the fierceness of our yearning to make good. --Jim Shepard, author of You Think That's Bad and Like You'd Understand, Anyway