Marion McNabb joins the Author Spotlight this week to chat about her debut novel, Some Doubt About It

Author Name: Marion McNabb

Book Title: Some Doubt About It

Book Genre: Bookclub Fiction/Women’s Fiction

Release Date: May 7, 2024

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Welcome, Marion! How would you describe Some Doubt About It?

Some Doubt About It is a smart beach read that follows Caroline, a self-proclaimed “Success at life,” as she falls from grace and is forced to face her former mentor Devorah and she must reexamine all of the things she’s been preaching about and thought she knew. In so doing, Caroline learns what true success, and love, are really all about.

What sparked the idea for this book?

I began writing this book in a playwriting class in Los Angeles. As I got into the story the narrative changed for me and I felt I needed to delve deeper into the characters internal dialogue and the story slowly began to unfold in long form fiction prose. I worked on it with a book coach for a little while and then honed it and got it pretty tight and sent it out for a development edit. Once I got it back, I tweaked and honed and got it really tight. I had it copyedited and proofed for grammar and such and then I started submitting it. All of that had taken over a year. I sent to one hundred agents. It was a long, arduous process. I knew I was in the mix, though, because the rejections I was getting were more personalized. They were saying things like, “I really love this story but we’ve got something like it,” or in one case, “I love the book and I know it’s going to sell and I’d love you to send me a signed copy when it does, but I’m just not the agent for this project.” And hearing stuff like that after crickets for so long helped me stay the course. In the summer of 2022 I had eased up and knew something was brewing. I could feel it – like somehow, in my bones, I was close. And then I got an offer of representation from the delightful, smiley, Tina Schwartz at the Purcell Agency. We hit it off and within a few months we had an offer on the table from Lake Union Publishing. It was exhilarating!

What drew you to women’s/book club fiction?

Writing in this genre is definitely intentional. I read every day almost always Women’s Fiction/Bookclub Fiction, so I think my brain is just trained to think in this format. It’s very satisfying for me. And just as when I write my screenplays I’m thinking that I want to write something I’d like to read. The story follows two women, Caroline and Devorah, both at different stages of life and I loved them both. It’s very much a story of friendship and second chances and all the love, laughter, anger, envy, insecurity, humility and intensity that we all experience at times in our lives. It felt very freeing to walk in their shoes and create a world for them that so closely resembles what I see all around me now. I was not living on Cape Cod when I wrote the story but CC was definitely my muse and is almost another character in the story as well.

What’s your favorite part about writing/being an author? What do you find challenging?

My favorite part about being an author is connecting with readers. It is so incredibly satisfying to have a thought pop into my head and I spend time toiling with it and thinking and walking and writing it out and editing and then all of a sudden it’s in someone else’s hands and they put their own experience on it. That is one thing that is so interesting to me – people have come away thinking or feeling something that I didn’t even realize was part of the story. The universality of the story is like a big umbrella but every reader is looking at it from their own perspective and that fact and the conversations I have had recently with readers has been so exciting. Writing is such a solitary endeavor but this part, interacting with readers and reading interpretations and so forth, really has made the process come alive. It’s very gratifying.

Any words of wisdom you give your pre-published writer self (or to a new writer)?