I’m delighted to announce that my debut novel, The Rites of Man, will be published in December by Ten16 Press, a small house based in Wisconsin.
The Rites of Man, set in 1996, tells the story of a creative woman, Sherry McManus, whose entanglement with an author upends both their lives and sparks a national conversation about artistic legitimacy and the rights of women. An important detail: The name of the author is Tom Paine, who built his National Book Award-winning career by writing contemporary novels under the titles of his revolutionary namesake, Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis. And there the trouble begins…
As The Rites of Man moves toward publication, I’m excited to be working with Michael Braun, the owner and editor of Ten16, a division of Orange Hat Publishing. Michael and I are both alumni of the University of Wisconsin / Madison. We were lucky enough to connect via the UW alumni newsletter. So I owe a big thank you to both Michael and my alma mater.
In the days ahead, I’ll be offering an opportunity to pre-order. Click here for a sneak peak at the novel. My first scheduled reading of The Rites of Man will take place in January.
In the meantime, you can check out some of my previous writing. Happy reading!
Previously by Meg Bortin …
Meet Mona Venture — my alter ego, who leaves America in the Vietnam era, moves to Paris, becomes a reporter, and goes on to Fleet Street and Gorbachev’s Russia. She’s the heroine of my independently published memoir, Desperate to Be a Housewife.
Mona’s misadventures with men unfold against a backdrop of historic events. She’s young, she’s modern and she’s desperate to solve a problem: how to reconcile her life as an independent woman with her dreams of happily-ever-after.
Before writing Desperate, I was a journalist for many years with postings in Paris, London, Moscow and Manila. To check out some of the articles I’ve written, click here.
My first literary work was Dear Djeneba, an essay in an anthology on adoption published by Granta in 2005 and Random House in 2006. As a blogger, I write regularly on French cuisine as The Everyday French Chef.