Down the Creek's winding path to publication

In 2012, as a stressed-out graduate student battling imposter syndrome, I attended the Southern Women Writers Conference at Berry College, where Dorothy Allison banged her fist on the podium and told us to write what bleeds. The previous day, Melody Moezzi, an Iranian American journalist, encouraged us to write the stories that are hard to talk about—because those are the important stories.

Sitting in that banquet room with silverware clanking as people ate conference chicken, I knew I had to rewrite the novel that I’d started in 2006 while in college. The story needed to be about when my family’s land on Cumberland Island was seized by eminent domain. It’s one of the most central aspects of our family identity, but it’s incredibly hard to explain, often because of the lingering emotional baggage and because it’s hard to fathom an undeveloped island only accessible by boat in today’s times. Yet my veins buzzed with energy, and plot points linked together like puzzle pieces in my thoughts.

So all I to do was rewrite a novel. Easy. Except I had to pass the comprehensive exams for my PhD program. And write a dissertation. And get a job.

This journey has taken over twenty years from initial brainstorming to published book. I have given up on this novel so many times and doubted whether it would ever be more than a file on my computer. The path has taken sharp, unexpected turns with one barrier after another. But ever since I was a child, I knew two things: I’d publish novels, and I’d be a mother. I just didn’t know how hard it would be to make both of those dreams a reality.

***

As Facebook was launching and the war on terror raged, I was a stressed-out college student battling imposter syndrome at Jacksonville University in Florida. In my search to figure out who I was, I grasped onto the stories I’d been told about my family history on Cumberland Island. We were then (and still are now) the oldest family still on the island, predating the famous Carnegies. In my slightly moldy-smelling dorm room, I started writing stories based on the childhood of my great-great aunt Mary Miller, my great grandfather Laurie, and their brother Pierce. They’d spent their early years growing up at a hotel on the north end of Cumberland, owned by their uncle and managed by their father, Laurence A. Miller. While I was growing up, people frequently said, "Someone should write a book about Aunt Mary." I always thought, why not me? If Faulkner could create Yoknapatawpha county, then I could create a fictional island based on Cumberland.

Using Aunt Mary’s old family pictures for inspiration, I began stringing together scenes: a goat cart, a steamboat getting stuck on a sandbar, a ghost in the cemetery. I wrote about a plucky girl named Rebecca, which I later changed to Lottie Belle so I could have a more unique protagonist. At the time, I called the island Metele, which was the Timucuan word for feather. My creative writing teacher at the time encouraged me to write a chapter for my final project for her class, and a few parts of that original chapter remain in the published version (in the chapter “Down the Creek at Low Tide”).

Here's Lottie Belle Bunkley Flood. I loved her name so much I used it for the character based on Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary's father and Lottie Belle's father were first cousins.

I was writing the great American novel. The future was full of sunshine and open doors and possibly a Pulitzer.

But then I was rejected from all of the MFA creative writing programs that I’d applied to.

The year of sadness began. I moved back in with my parents. My friends moved on to exciting jobs and graduate programs. I worked a low paying job as a teacher’s assistant in a K-8 private school, monitoring troublesome kids during lunchtime. Oh, and my dog died.

But I was a writer no matter what. I spent that year after college researching Georgia history and scrawling notes in spiral notebooks. My laptop began to fill with a frame narrative about an elderly woman named Lottie Belle stuck in a nursing home and reflecting on her past. (It took me a few years to realize I was copying Fried Green Tomatoes! Sorry, Ninny!) I wrote about 75% of a manuscript. A terribly sappy manuscript, full of racial stereotypes.

I still had a lot to learn about writing—and myself.

The first outline for Down the Creek from 2008-2009.

***

By 2012, I’d earned an MA in English at Georgia Southern, and I’d finished coursework in my PhD program at the University of Southern Mississippi. I was teaching first-year Composition and World Literature. I was buried under a pile of books for my dissertation research into the depiction of southern girlhood in children’s literature. I was battling nerve pain in my wrists and arms caused by overuse of the computer and icing down my forearms every night. I’d survived a dark bout with depression, partly sparked by fear that the nerve pain would keep me from writing fiction in the future.

It was not the time to rewrite a novel, but the Southern Women Writers conference had scratched at the urge, and it kept itching.

I read about segregation during the Jim Crow era and wondered about the impact of those social codes on the hotel at Cumberland in the early twentieth century. As a child, did Aunt Mary notice them? Did she think they were wrong?

I looked at pictures like this one with a fresh perspective. Instead of thinking about Aunt Mary in the trolley, I wondered about the Black boy holding the horse and what he thought in this moment. Such thoughts led me to develop the character Sip.

On Saturday afternoons, holed up in my one-bedroom apartment in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where I could barely afford to run the air conditioning, I started writing new stories about Lottie Belle learning her home had been seized by eminent domain and was becoming a national park. At the time, she was still in a nursing home, and her grandnieces were trying to facilitate her release. I imagined a jailbreak scene where Lottie Belle escaped from the nursing home.

But I needed a full-time job, so the dissertation and my first academic article received my focus. Besides, I was a literature student—not a creative writing one. If you were really serious about writing a novel, said that ugly voice in my head, you’d have reapplied to creative writing graduate programs. You’d be studying the craft of writing.

The desire to finish Lottie Belle’s (and Aunt Mary’s) story never left me, though. When God gives you a dream, you can’t ignore it, even when you try.

***

            After graduate school, I was teaching literature in my first full-time academic job at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. It was a two-day drive to south Georgia, and I was desperately homesick for salt marshes, sand dunes, and live oaks. I finally was financially stable, so I devoted the summer of 2016 to finishing the new manuscript of Down the Creek at Low Tide. I had no idea how to pronounce “metele,” so I changed the name of the island to “cuyu” (the Timucuan word for fish). Told through Lottie Belle’s perspective, it fictionalized my family’s experience with eminent domain. The chapters moved throughout different times in Lottie Belle’s life, from her childhood at the hotel to World War II to the 1960s.

I wanted to capture the lifelong battle of Lottie Belle fighting for her home. I wanted to tell all my favorite family stories. I wanted to show the intricacies of Lottie Belle’s relationship with all her family members. But it was doing way too much. The story was 110,000 words long.

My research and notes for Down the Creek from over the years

Over the next few years, I began cutting parts, reducing it to around 100,000 words. I deleted the nursing home plot and took us straight to the island. I axed the ghosts, leaning more into realistic historical fiction than southern gothic. I thought I was done. In fall 2017, I began sending my query letter to literary agents, sure I would have a book deal in months.

The rejections began. One very kind agent said the book was not ready. She was right.

I applied feedback from beta readers, critique partners, and family members. I paid for editors to help me revise my opening chapter, synopsis, and query letter. The rejection emails kept rolling in. Or, in most cases, the agents didn’t respond, which meant no.

By 2021, I had received 52 rejections (which is not a lot in the current literary market). Three agents had requested full manuscripts, and three had requested partials. I felt fortunate the book had gotten that much attention, but I didn’t know what else to do.

Teaching during Covid had left me drained. I needed to publish academic articles to gain tenure at UNC Pembroke (I’d moved there in 2018). I was preparing to get married, and we wanted to have children. I was also trying to finish writing Searching for Spartina, my YA historical fiction manuscript. Down the Creek, once again, drifted off with the current, seeming like an impossible dream.

***

Some writers develop ideas while using alcohol or drugs. For me, it was sleep deprivation after the birth of my first daughter in spring 2023. Maybe I was so exhausted that I finally had the courage to ignore my inner critic. Maybe my brain entered a dreamlike state where it could access deep emotions. Maybe it was the postpartum hormones. Whatever it was, I realized what Down the Creek needed.

Another rewrite.

The story needed to condense into two timelines (1980s and 1910s), so I could further develop the plot in each timeline, deepen the characterization, and unravel more of the impact of eminent domain and a developing national park. Hopefully, this shift could help readers connect to the story more. This rewrite also could return me to my original goal of writing the story that was hard to tell—the one that bleeds.

So all I had to do was rewrite about two-thirds of a novel—with a newborn. When I was only getting four hours of sleep. When my tenure portfolio was due in six months. Easy, right?

My baby, named after Aunt Mary, swung in her little swing while I furiously typed. I completed as much as I could during the one semester of maternity leave and continued to write on Christmas and summer breaks. I gathered more feedback from critique partners and kept revising.

In fall 2024, I attended a writer’s retreat on St. Simons Island, GA, sponsored by the Atlanta Writers Club, the Georgia Writers Museum, and the St. Simons Island Writers Group. My goal was to rewrite the ending of Down the Creek, which I did, holed up in an Airbnb. The speakers gave wonderful advice about submitting to small presses. I began to think that a small press would be a better fit for me and Down the Creek because my book doesn’t neatly fit into trends for commercial or popular fiction. I’m also not writing to make money, become a star, and land a Netflix series (and if you are writing with those goals, that’s awesome! I hope it works out!). I just wanted my book to be published by someone who would care about historical accuracy and literary quality.

At the retreat, someone in the audience made a comment about Mercer University Press publishing novels, so I added it to my giant spreadsheet where I’d been tracking my submissions.

Writing from a bench near the pier on St. Simons Island, GA in November 2024

Fast forward to summer 2025: I had another infant, and once again, I was sleep deprived. My brain decided it would be a good idea to start submitting my novel to small presses since a few had looming deadlines for non-agented submissions. Who needs rest after a C-section? (I did, as I learned later when my anxiety got out of control, but that’s a story for another day.)

I submitted to five small presses, emphasizing my academic identity to help build my author persona and show I was capable of marketing a novel. Mercer University Press was one of my top choices because of their focus on southern topics. While breastfeeding my baby, I read books published by the presses to familiarize myself with their taste, and I carefully worked that into my queries/proposals, but I honestly expected more rejections. I had more small presses on my list that I planned to submit to after the rejections.

But Mercer offered to publish Down the Creek!

So now I’m a stressed-out college professor, struggling with imposter syndrome over becoming a published novelist. Anxiety rattles inside me at the prospect of mothering two kids under two and launching a debut novel. (My baby is crying for a bottle as I write this.) But I’ll keep moving forward the way I’ve always done: by telling stories. Especially the ones that are hard to talk about. I’m so grateful Mercer is taking this chance with my novel, and I’m excited for all of you to join me on this adventure. Stay tuned!