Cynthia Elder's new novel, If the Sea Must Be Your Home, will be released by Holand Press in spring 2025.
"O dear, dear, this headwind, it seems as though it never would change... I do not believe there is anything that brings so much disappointment with it as four or five days’ calm or headwind, when one has been out a long time and is within a few hundred miles of the port, especially if they are short of anything as we are of wood and water." ~ Ruth Jenkins, 1864, aboard the ship "Hoogly," 149 days at sea, bound for Liverpool
For the last few weeks, I've been waiting for a shift in the wind. With my new novel finished and my publisher working furiously behind the scenes to transform my vision into a reality, I find myself at loose ends. Thankfully, I'm not short of wood or water, and I haven't been at sea for 149 days like Ruth Jenkins, one of the people you'll meet in If the Sea Must Be Your Home.
In this quiet space before the flurry of the book release, I've been remembering how it feels to be on a sailboat without a breath of wind. The sea appears benign, unthreatening. We languish in the still water, our source of power no stronger than a wish. Little is required of me other than to wait for the wind to freshen or to find another task to occupy my time... not unlike waiting for a book to be published.
As the days tick by, I wander through my home, looking for jobs that need doing. My office now has visible floor space. Stacks of reference books, archival boxes and draft manuscripts no longer litter the carpet. I've read some great books and taken plenty of long walks. I am becalmed.
But I remember the headwinds from just a few months ago, when I spent my leisure time spiriting my manuscript to agents and publishers, only to have it blown back in my face. I despaired of ever making progress.That's the nature of headwinds. They blow at you from the direction you want to travel, making it impossible to go there. The boat must tack this way and that, forever pointing away from your mark, drawing a zig-zag line across the ocean rather than steering toward your destination. It requires a great deal of work to make any distance at all in a headwind.
I'll always be grateful to the hardworking folks at Holand Press, who pulled me out of the headwinds and pushed me back on coure. For the next few days, I will settle into the calm. Look: there's a slight ripple on the surface of the water. The wind will change soon enough.
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