One of my most productive periods as a writer occurred during lockdown in 2020, when I wrote my third novel, The Unexpected Guests. It featured an ensemble of characters struggling through the early days of the pandemic. My beta readers enjoyed the first draft and admired how it realistically captured that terrifying time in our lives. But after I finished revisions and tried querying agents and publishers, the response each time was the same: “No Covid manuscripts.”
But wait, you’re probably saying—what about that novel by Jodi Picoult, the one where the young woman gets stuck in the Galapagos during lockdown while her surgical resident boyfriend fights to save lives in a New York City hospital? How about Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton, who isolates in Maine with her ex-husband during the pandemic? And let’s not forget that Michigan family Ann Patchett wrote about. These are just a few of the renowned authors who’ve published Covid stories . . . merely the tip of the viral iceberg.
The simple explanation is that the work of best-selling authors is far more marketable than that of unknowns like me. So, different rules apply. It’s a double standard, for sure, but one that makes sense.
For my novel to stand a chance, I knew I couldn’t merely delete the dozens of references to Covid and coronavirus. Drastic revisions were called for. Perhaps you’ve heard the term kill their darlings, a phrase that describes when writers delete favorite lines or scenes from a text. Well, in this rewrite, the carnage was horrific. Eighteen months, several drafts, and hundreds of dead darlings later, I had a new and improved novel. A publishable novel.
I’m delighted that Black Rose Writing, a traditional independent publishing house with an impressive catalog of high quality titles in many genres, agreed. They published The Unexpected Guests in December 2024. BookLife/Publishers Weekly named this book an Editor’s Pick and called it “a captivating journey that delivers exactly what readers crave.” The prequel, titled My Year of Casual Acquaintances, received the Indies Today award for Best Contemporary Book of 2024.
Here is one of the many scenes excised from the original manuscript. I’m confident you’ll like the new version better when you read it. I know I do.
APRIL 2020
Sunny was wiping down the delivery items from the supermarket, an activity that always raised her blood pressure. She tried to make a little game of it. As she put things away, she asked herself: Will we be out of lockdown by the time I use up this bar of soap? This package of paper towel rolls? This bag of rice? She’d been playing the game since last month, though, and there was still no sign of coming out a winner.
When she went to stash the disinfected crackers and cookies in the cupboard, she pulled out a bag of assorted CBD gummies from the lower shelf to make room for the new items.
She looked at the gummies with longing and reached inside the bag.
Don’t do it, Sunny. You can’t keep falling into that trap.
She forced herself to pull her hand from the bag. Sunny would be perpetually stoned if she ingested cannabis every time her anxiety level rose. She knew she needed to find other relaxation techniques. Today, she went out on her balcony with a spiral notebook and a set of colored pencils to make sketches of the greenbelt below and the ocean in the distance.
The drawing had a calming effect on her, as it always had. But then she realized, horror-stricken, that she’d forgotten to wipe down the frozen food packages, and she’d touched the non-sanitized surfaces as she stowed the items in the freezer. Furious with herself, her heart crashing in her chest, she raced back indoors to re-wipe the freezer items and wash her hands for the hundredth time.
Can I catch the virus from that? And maybe even lose my life, as the newscasters warned.
Sunny had always hated the phrase losing one’s life. It called to mind the loss of something trivial, like a set of housekeys or a pair of reading glasses. But with coronavirus, it did seem possible to lose one’s life due to an innocent mistake like the careless misapplication of bleach wipes.
Pulling her hair back into a ponytail, she went to the sink to prepare a green salad for tonight’s dinner. Sunny washed the produce in soapy water, then rinsed and wiped it dry, following a procedure recommended by an ER doctor. She’d watched his instructional video on YouTube. Taking a bite of the greens, Sunny detected a faint trace of soap. Maybe if she drenched them in enough vinaigrette, it would be all right.
So many details to worry about. At least she’d wised up on how to secure delivery slots. The orders were getting more accurate, too—today there were only a couple of substitutions.
Last week, the store had sent vegan breakfast patties in place of the sweet Italian chicken sausage she’d ordered. Not having an alternative, she used them in the mushroom pasta dish she made for Todd that night. It was so bad, he’d pushed the plate away after a couple of bites.
She hadn’t been seeing much of Todd. On weeknights he preferred to sleep at his little bungalow in Long Beach, citing important early morning conference calls. Though she’d given Todd a key to her condo, he had not reciprocated. For that matter, he never invited her over to his place. Sunny didn’t want to ask him why. She assumed he was nervous about his job, about life in general. Who wasn’t these days?
Tonight Todd would be coming for dinner, and with this latest delivery she had the goods to fix him a respectable meal. She’d make penne pasta with meat sauce, accompanied by salad and garlic bread. Todd liked to eat Italian.
(Author’s note: We skip ahead to later that evening, after they’ve dined and Todd has departed.)
Alone in her bed, thumbing through a magazine, Sunny came across an article debunking the ER doc’s method of sanitizing vegetables due to the high risk of nausea and diarrhea. Overcome once again with anxiety, she lay in bed holding her tummy, waiting for illness to descend. If she developed symptoms, how would she tell if it was a gastrointestinal reaction to the soap, or the dreaded onset of the virus? And suppose she’d made Todd sick, too?
That was the last thing their relationship needed.
***
