We recently connected with Michelle Cameron and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Michelle, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
When I joined my business partner in The Writers Circle, we stipulated in our partnership contract that we were authors first and foremost. Of course, it hasn’t always turned out that way. The community we have built among writers, in New Jersey and beyond, are particularly meaningful. Our goal is to bring every writer to their own best level – whether that be for publication (which we never promise) or simply to share their work among their peers and with their family and friends. In addition to weekly classes, we offer special events throughout the year, including day-long writing retreats, guest speakers from the publishing world, and special craft workshops.
Every summer, we run the Summer Creative Writing Intensives for teens “who love to write.” This has become one of the most exhausting and exhilarating three weeks I’ve experienced for the past eleven years. The teens who join us not only benefit from working with published authors, but also find their tribe – other teens who embrace creative writing wholeheartedly, which is something they often don’t find during the school year. They spend their time learning craft, writing intensely, enjoying the literary activities we provide, and forging lifelong friendships.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I always wanted to be an author, but for a long time I put family and jobs first. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I finally saw the publication of a verse novel, which I followed up with three historical novels. A fourth will be published next year.
When I began writing, I wrote three books that (thankfully) never saw the light of day. When I failed to find a publisher for the third, I decided I had tried and failed. But my youngest son has an inborn need to write and started doing so from a very young age. Watching his joy at creation, I decided that my publication goals needed to be secondary to my own impulse to write.
So for a while, and because the form is short and sometimes quick, I wrote poetry. I could dash off a first draft of a poem in the dojo waiting room or in the bleachers at the wrestling match. It wasn’t until I shared my work with a few writing mentors that I was encouraged to try publication once more. And my small successes led to my first full-scale verse novel, In the Shadow of the Globe. I drew upon the research I had done for the third failed book, a YA about Shakespeare and the Globe theatre, to write a fictionalized story about the bard and his acting company.
After that book won the attention of a small literary press, who was pleased to publish it but warned me they had no distribution and no marketing, I discovered the story of my 13th Century rabbi ancestor, Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg. I tried – and failed – to use the verse novel form to write his story. This book wanted, clearly, to be a full-fledged historical novel. So, after struggling for some time, I wrote it – and it was published by Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books.
At that point, with the imprimatur of a major publishing house, I thought I had it made. But I didn’t reckon with market forces and the way a recession year would play havoc both within the publishing house and with my sales numbers. So it took nearly a decade for my next book, Beyond the Ghetto Gates, to be published by a hybrid house with a stellar reputation for production and distribution.
Just as that novel was about to be released upon the world, COVID struck. So my carefully constructed marketing plan had to pivot to many, many Zoom meetings. The silver lining, of course, was that I was able to “travel” much further away than I could have, were I to be limited to personal appearances. But it still wasn’t what I’d hoped for.
So right now, I’m about to see the publication of my latest novel, Babylon: a novel of Jewish captivity. (See below for how this novel actually took more than a decade to see the light of day.) I have high hopes for it – and will swiftly follow it up in August 2024 with the publication of Napoleon’s Mirage, a sequel to Beyond the Ghetto Gates.
In addition to my writing, I take great pride in my day job as a director of The Writers Circle, which offers creative writing and community to children and adults in Summit, South Orange, Maplewood, Montclair and Morristown, NJ, as well as virtually. I teach classes to children and teens and novel classes to adults. I’m particularly proud that eight of my novel students are now themselves published authors.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I have discovered there were many neglected periods in Jewish history that were core to our experience and culture. During my book talks, I am often greeted by readers of all faiths who tell me “I never knew that.” It’s an honor to bring these periods to them. All of my historical novels to date deal with these little-known parts of history – the rise of antisemitism in medieval Europe, Napoleon’s breaking down Italy’s ghetto gates and emancipating that country’s Jewish population, and in my most recent novel, the way worship had to shift during the Babylonian Exile when the Judeans lost their Temple, becoming dependent on prayer, charity, and the stories of the Bible.
This is particularly important today, with the rise of overt antisemitism in the world. If I can claim a “mission,” it is to help my readers better understand what made the Jewish people who they are today and to combat long-held misconceptions about them which often stem from wrong-headed medieval tropes. This is particularly true in Babylon because of its shared Biblical heritage. While Jews and Christians may not always interpret the stories of the prophets in the same way, my hope is that portraying them in the novel can provide bridges between us.
Of course, as a writer, I see my mission as first and foremost to tell a good story. Any thematic elements that help me do so are secondary to that mission – despite being important in themselves.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Babylon was originally written more than a decade ago, while I was looking for an agent and she was looking for a publisher for The Fruit of Her Hands. Because my agent offered the manuscript to the major publishers during a recession year, we received nothing but rave rejections. Several editors told us that “if times were different, I’d take this in a heartbeat.” Unfortunately, times were not different.
Once my agent gave up on submissions, I felt I had no choice but to put the novel away and begin work on my next project. However, I never lost faith in it. As I grew as a writer, I would revisit the novel and make some significant revisions to it. I did offer the novel to a couple of smaller houses, who again turned it down with high praise. Then someone in a Facebook group mentioned that Wicked Son was a new Jewish-oriented imprint. I submitted it to them and they accepted it, to my great delight. So the novel, which I have described as “the book of my heart,” is finally out in the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://michelle-cameron.com/
- Instagram: @michellecameronwriter
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michellecameronauthor/
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-cameron-26b0b610
- Twitter: @mcameron_writer
Image Credits
Portrait by Beth Forester