Chasing AllieCat! 

New life for this story. 

I feel the need to tell the story of the story of Chasing AllieCat, my second novel. Not the plot, but the story of the life of this novel. It’s so so full of twists and turns, it’s almost funny. And now, 13 years after it was published, there’s been hope and now LIFE for a Second coming! 

Original Cover, published by Flux in 2011:

The new cover: New edition, coming out late this summer by Flat Sole Studio, with a new cover design and photo byTaylor Chase 📸  chaseincolor who is the professional photographer for the Lifetime Grand Prix pro offroad cycling series! 

The story started:

Out riding at Mount Kato with big group of friends, I got done riding and was resting at the bottom of the hill. I watched Jenna Rinehart (then still Jenna Zander–on Instagram jzrinehart) riding through the woods. From near the bottom of the hill, I watched her flying along the trail, banking easily and gracefully through the corners and coming out of the woods at at least 20 miles an hour. It was like watching a cheetah run. I wished I were as fearless on the terrain, and as adept at navigating the rocks and roots and hills. But I wasn’t. I was kind of a chicken on those mountain bike trails. 

I went home and wrote about a girl mountain biking like that. I tried to write it from the perspective of the expert mountain biker, flying along, bending low, keeping the center of gravity where it needed to be. But it didn’t work. I couldn’t feel that sense of control and freedom. So I switched the perspective and wrote from the point of view of another girl, watching her, envying her abilities, admiring her, and honestly wishing she WERE that expert rider. That point of view worked. Immediately, the girl who rode like Jenna, who was the inspiration, became her own character, and in my head and on my computer screen, her name became Allie. And the narrator became Sadie, who was Allie’s friend but she admired her so much she wished she could ride like that–so much she almost wanted to be Allie.  

So I had characters. But no story.  (This picture is from the film short made by Steph Borklund of the story, much later).

Weeks later, I was walking my dogs in the woods near the Blue Earth River, in Le Hillier (now South Bend) and walked through what I call the Junk Woods. It’s since been cleaned up a great deal, but back then, it seemed that people drove their pickups into the woods, loaded with household trash, and shoved it out. There were the usual cans, bottles, tires, antifreeze containers, but here there were stoves, water heaters, tables, chairs, wrecked sofas, mattresses, plates, pans, boxes, used condoms of course, tarps, etc., etc. I thought (is this anyone’s first thought in such a situation, or is that exclusive to those with a writer’s brain!?)  You could hide a body here and no one would ever find it! Who might possibly find it? Anyone who used the trail. A mountain biker could find the body!

Aha! Now I had characters AND a story idea. I dug into that, and Chasing AllieCat was conceived. 

Months and months and months later, the book was done. I sent it off to my editor at HarperCollins, who published my first book. My editor liked the story a lot. But when he took it to editorial board, the novel was rejected. Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged, my first book, had not sold enough copies. This was long enough ago that I had NO idea, and NOBODY told me, that I was responsible to promote and sell my own book. I naively thought the publisher would do that.  Wrong. The day after that rejection, however, my editor left HarperCollins. I’m still not sure if there was a relationship between the two events, and if so, what precipitated what…but luck was not in my corner. 

However, my agent George Nicholson, found a home for the story eventually, with Flux, a young adult imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide, and my editor, Brian Farrey-Latz was a delight to work with. In fact, that publishing experience was my favorite. The staff seemed to really like the story and helped promote the book, and even sent me to ALA in San Diego. I like to think they all believed in this story, too. I loved working with Brian. 

I had fun promoting the book, and people kept telling me how much they liked the story. Nothing is more gratifying to a writer than that. One adult male reader told me that it was the first time he had ever stayed up all night to finish a book. 

Then, I got asked to be keynote speaker at a young writers’ conference at Saint Benedict College near Saint Cloud. This was a three-day gig, with 500 kids attending each day. I spent ages working on my presentation, and I knew it was okay. Keeping the attention of 500 middle-schoolers in a big auditorium isn’t easy, but I had them. It worked. They were listening.

After my talk, the kids were turned loose to go to the bookstore set up in a big gym, where all breakout presenters and I sold our books. They lined up halfway around the gym to buy Chasing AllieCat. We sold all fifty copies in the first twenty minutes. The bookstore manager called Flux to order a few hundred more copies. 

BAM. She was told that Llewellyn had sold the Flux imprint THAT WEEK, and most of the titles went out of print. That week. There was ONE copy in the warehouse. That week, when I returned home from the conference, of course, the letter from Flux informing me about all this was in my mailbox, returning all rights to me, but way too late for a whole bunch of sales! 

Every since that, I buy used copies on Amazon or B&N to sell at book events. I can never keep copies on hand. 

One more bad luck story here…George Nicholson, my agent, said he “loved” my next novel, Slider’s Son, but his health was failing and he didn’t have the energy to push it with publishers as far as I could tell, and he actually passed away before that novel was sold. He’s a huge loss to the YA and kidlit world, but dark humor of one more bad-luck, bad timing bit seems to follow my author career!  I found a small independent Minnesota publisher for that story…too much to go into right now,  but sadly, one of the two editors in that group passed away between the time that they contracted with me and its publication! Maybe nobody should touch working with me. Am I a black cloud?

HOWEVER, when they published Slider’s Son, Northstar Press talked with me about the possibility of re-releasing Chasing AllieCat, but I guess I didn’t pursue the idea with enough gusto. 

I contacted another small press, and after a verbal agreement to re-release this novel, they changed their minds. What else could happen? If I didn’t have bad luck, I would have NO luck. My first change-of-mind rejection happened with Doubleday Dell with my very first book Jake Riley, before I got an agent. So after this most current disappointment, I started talking with Blake Hoena, and eventually Flat Sole Studio contracted with me to get this story back out into the world. The rest has been a whirlwind. I had to go through the MS and re-edit, holding the published copy in hand, because I never had a final digital copy of the finished book–only a paper ARC.

I edited, I recorded an audio book with Triple Falls Productions (Thanks, Willis Strout, for a fun experience, and news about that will be forthcoming when he’s done editing), and Blake and I started searching for a cover image.

I found Taylor Chase, official photographer of the Lifetime Grand Prix series, because I was enthralled with photos he took of that race. I follow it closely because in the last years, I’ve become good friends with Jenna and Justin Rinehart, and it’s so much fun to follow Jenna’s professional racing career. Originally, we talked about using a picture of her on the front cover of the book, but when I reflected on this, I did NOT want anyone to think that Jenna is Allie. Allie has all sorts of personal drama, had a very shitty childhood, and I didn’t want people to associate anything but her cycling abilities with Jenna.  So Taylor Chase offered to let us buy the photo we’re using. He also designed the cover. I couldn’t love it more. 

And this morning, Flat Sole Studio has announced the upcoming re-release of Chasing AllieCat, so I can finally post this. I will update the saga as it continues. I can’t imagine this is all going to be smooth sailing, based on my track record! 

Here’s a scene from the shooting of the short movie Chasing AllieCat, which Steph Borklund made in 2016. Someday, we’d really like to make a feature-length film of this, but such is the stuff of pipe dreams. And those are the things that keep us going! (If it weren’t for dreams and believing in a story, I certainly would have stopped this circus a long time ago, and nobody else would get to meet Sadie, Allie, and Joe).

W

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