LISTEN: Perseverance in the face of rejection leads to a dream book deal

If the difference between a published author and an unpublished one is perseverance, then Jen Bray is the epitome of this, having achieved her dream deal after 15 years of trying, multiple abandoned manuscripts, and countless rejections. 

Now the political editor of the Sunday Times, Jen has built a formidable career reporting on Irish politics. She has worked with the Irish Times, the Sunday Tribune, and the Daily Mail, covering the drama of Leinster House, but alongside the deadlines and political intrigue, she was quietly pursuing her passion for writing fiction.

Her persistence finally paid off last year when her novel "The Lies Between Us" was snapped up by Penguin, the publisher she had long dreamed of working with. And on top of that, she has secured a US book deal, a major coup for a debut Irish writer.

Speaking on the books podcast "Natter with Kate and Michelle", Jen recalls her first attempt at writing a novel when she was barely out of college.

“I would have been around 20 or 21,” she says. “I wrote a novel called 'Womanizer'. So you can just imagine how good that was.”

She laughs now at the memory, but at the time, the rejection that followed was tough to take.

“I submitted it to publishers and it was terrible. I’m not even being self-deprecating; it really was bad.”

For a time, she stepped away from writing fiction, but the compulsion never left her, and throughout her 20s, she kept returning to it.

“I just kept coming back to it. I didn’t feel like I was really living if I wasn’t working on a book, even though I was very busy as a journalist.”

Over time, Jen began to treat thoughtful rejection letters as signposts, taking the nuggets of valuable advice they contained and using them to improve her craft.

“It’s learning that rejection isn’t a rejection of you as a person. It’s about the work… One of the phrases they use for it is ‘gold dust’. If someone takes the time to give you proper feedback, that’s incredibly useful.”

Around six years ago, she sent a manuscript to a prominent literary agent, a move she now views with some amusement as wildly optimistic, though to her surprise, he replied.

“He said if I could bring the flair from my first chapter to the rest of the book, if I could invest that much time in the whole manuscript, then he thought I might have a future in this.”

Jen listened carefully to the agent’s feedback, and in particular to the message that her characters needed to be stronger, a message she had heard before.

“I realised I needed to work on my character most of all. I invested a lot of time in making them feel so real that I felt like I could go for a walk with them in the park.”

That work fed directly into the novel that would finally change everything. The Lies Between Us, a mystery that moves between Dunmore East and New York, centres on three sisters with complicated relationships and even more complicated histories.

Susanna, the eldest, is a successful novelist. Lucy, the youngest, is a former garda who left the force under mysterious circumstances, while Tara, the middle sister, manages a hotel and carries deep resentment towards Susanna.

When the sisters gather at their mother’s coastal cottage in Dunmore East for a reunion, an irate stranger arrives at the door. Within hours, Susanna has disappeared, and the next morning, a woman’s body is discovered in a nearby cove.

“It sets off a murder investigation that Lucy becomes drawn into,” Jen said. “But the more she digs, the more she realises that her family has a history in Dunmore East that she knew nothing about.”

In the same year that she secured the deal with Penguin, Jen also made a major professional move, leaving the Irish Times to become political editor of the Sunday Times. Balancing both roles has not been easy, but she doesn’t want to let either of them go.

“It’s been quite a year,” she said. “In some ways, I don’t even know how to describe it. There have definitely been moments when I’m trying to spin two plates and one of them crashes. You can’t be completely on top of everything all the time.”

Jen points out that to succeed as a political journalist, you have to be obsessed with politics, and to get a book written and published, you have to be obsessed with the writing process. Her experience as a reporter has, she believes, given her one major advantage as a novelist.

“As a journalist, you spend a lot of time watching people, their mannerisms, their behaviour, the little details that make them who they are,” she says. “A lot of that can’t go into news stories. But it’s perfect material for fiction.”

After fifteen years of persevering, seeing her book on the shelves has been both thrilling and surreal.

“You work towards something for so long that when it happens, it almost feels unreal,” she says.“One day, you wake up thinking, this is amazing, my dream has come true. The next day, you’re thinking, what have I done? Can we take this back?”

Despite the emotional swings, she believes it is important to celebrate the good moments.

“There are so many difficult things in life,” she says, “so when something good happens, you have to grab it with both hands.”

Listen to the full episode below:

Jen was speaking to writers Kate Durrant and Michelle McDonagh on the books podcast "Natter with Kate and Michelle", produced in association with Bookstation, Ireland’s fastest-growing and best-value bookseller, and Irish Central, your daily source for all things Irish. 

You can buy Jen’s new book, "The Lies Between Us," on Bookstation.  

Listen to Jen’s interview on Natter with Kate and Michelle now at Acast or on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to follow us on Instagram @natterwithkateandmichelle or Facebook.