Wildest dreams come true

I'm going to be a published author!

We agreed we would go out with the book after the summer.

On September 5^th, Tuesday—sun-browned child freshly back in school, mangoes from the Philippines still ripening on the kitchen counter, suitcases emptied of a summer wardrobe now churning away in the wash—the two badass women who represent my work (Jo in London, Deborah in the US) sent my memoir out to the editors on their lists.

I had read enough author horror stories, seen too many bitter Twitter threads. Armed with distractions, projects, and articles like How to stay sane while your book is out on submission, I hunkered down and prepared to wait. Weeks, months. Even (gulp) a year.

“For the sake of my sanity, just update me once a week,” I told Jo. “Only call me if there’s an offer.”

Less than 24 hours later, on September 6^th, Wednesday, she called.

We had received an offer—no, offers, plural—for a pre-empt.

In publishing lingo, a pre-empt is an offer of a publishing deal that’s considered ‘too good to refuse’, so as to block bids from other publishers. Once an author turns down a pre-empt, that amount is as good as gone, and the book goes to auction.

Have you ever witnessed your most audacious dreams—the wild secret hopes you never dared admit to yourself—unfold in real time?

Even now, over a month later, I am at a loss for words to describe what that first call did to me. I remember I was walking home through the park, and I was so overcome I had to sit down on a bench and let waves of unnameable feeling wash over me.

Closing my eyes and trusting the universe (and my agent), I turned down the very first offers for my book. I had to stay the course and trust that there would be more.

And there were.

By September 8^th, Friday, we had six offers, potentially seven. The auction was on.

On the morning of September 12^th, Tuesday, I was on a British Airways flight—after missing the Eurostar train I had originally booked (don’t ask), a last-minute phone booking by my husband, and a mad dash from Amsterdam Central Station to the furthest reaches of Schiphol Airport.

The warmest hug from Jo (our first in real life) and a neatly printed itinerary from our wonder assistant Daisy welcomed me to London. Mouthfuls of hotdog washed down with gulps of Bloody Mary were the fuel for my launch, propelling me into a whirlwind tour of my new world.

Three days of meetings. Six publishers. I had thought that we were all here to just, you know, vibe. Nothing in the world could have prepared me for the pitch decks. The campaigns. The presents. The stacks of gorgeous books pressed into my hands. The profuse praise for this thing I had spent two years of my life making, that only a handful of people in the world had ever read, that I thought nobody wanted.

But here they were: people who read it. And wanted it. And how!

How had my world turned upside down, that the very gatekeepers I’d fought tooth and nail to be chosen by, were now pitching to be chosen by me?

I wish I could remember every single word that every editor said to me about my book. But I will always remember their intensity. Their passion. Most of all, their vulnerability. I must have done something, I remember thinking, that made them want to reveal themselves, to allow themselves to be seen, so difficult to do in a professional setting. Was it because I had gone first?

So many moments felt surreal. A top boss rushing out of a budget meeting to catch me before I disappeared into the lift. Being accosted on my way to the ladies’ room by pumping handshakes and ear-to-ear smiles. A crowd of feet behind the frosted glass wall of a conference room, waiting to meet me.

After so much solitary striving, so much uncertainty and self-doubt, it felt like it was all happening to someone else. But there was only me, and Jo next to me, smiling as though she’d always known this would happen. Of course she did.

Final bids received on Thursday, September 14^th.

World stopped. Knees buckled. Breath sucked out of my lungs in a whoosh. Life forever changed.

Then I was hurtling back to Amsterdam on the train on Friday, September 15^th, to a joint welcome planned by the men in my life: boyfriend with the van at the train station, husband waiting with champagne and a bouquet of flowers on the dining table. Card drawn by my daughter, glimmers in my best friend’s eyes.

I took the weekend to celebrate. To sweat it out on my beloved dance floor, to release my tears into the North Sea. To be held and loved and soothed and affirmed, to talk and think and dream and rest.

And on Monday, September 18^th, less than two weeks after my manuscript first landed in editors’ inboxes, I accepted the offer of a book deal.

I chose my publisher and said yes to the life of a published author.

I focus on the chronology here because I am still astounded by the speed with which the improbable, which I had believed impossible, happened. Even now, over a month later, my brain is struggling to catch up, an old computer in the midst of a slow upgrade. It’s a Windows 95 kind of day, I have said more than once.

It turns out that one’s wildest dreams coming true is both a blessing and a bomb, information overload and emotional rollercoaster, euphoria explosion and self-doubt tsunami (why can’t humans just be happy?), a tectonic shift remaking me and my world in real time.

In time, I would like to return to a few of the unexpected nuances and write about them in more detail.

But today, I have the best news in the world to share with you.

Because today, it’s official.

Read all about it in this exclusive on The Bookseller!

Thank you for reading. Thank you for believing in me. This feels like the end of so many things, but in ways I can’t fully explain, this is just the beginning.

Ask Me How It Works by Deepa Paul. Published by Viking Books UK. Home of memoirists Zadie Smith, Dolly Alderton, and Michelle Obama, and novelists Richard Osman, Elif Shafak, Donna Tartt, and more. An imprint of Penguin Random House UK. (She’s got a Big 5 book deal, baby!)

March 2025. Dreams into reality.