Mallory Cywinski is an author of contemporary literary fiction and horror romance. She lives near Philadelphia with her two children, rescue dog, and partner, and has a soft spot for well-made mushroom pizza and oat milk lattes (not together, of course). She is represented by P.S. Literary Agency, and her new book, Holidays Are For Other People, is currently in the works.  Follow her on Instagram @author.mallory and mallorycywinski.com.

I like to view my publishing journey like teetering dominoes in a path, except I’m unsure of when it was I knocked into that first piece, the catalyst leading to this exciting time of my life. In thinking of it this way, looking back with that clarity of age or simply of opportunities taken, I can see that none of it was time wasted, even if it felt like it at the time.

If I were forced to pick a starting point, beyond the “I wrote stories for my stuffies as a child,” line I so often hear (because it is so often true, and was for me, too), I’d say my path to becoming a professional author started when postpartum depression hit me like a ton of bricks the night my son was born. He arrived earthside at 11:12 pm on a December night nearly twelve years ago, and by 2 am, I was alone in my ensuite bathroom, sobbing on the floor, panicked and sure I had made a terrible mistake in becoming a mother; I’d never live up to it. I had my own mother wound a mile wide; why did I think I could do it?

Looking back on it, I can see that postpartum depression nearly killed me. I’ve even spoken on stage about how it nearly killed me. But it was that acute pain, dread, numbness, and then the desperate desire to not feel that way anymore that eventually—as in, eight years later—inspired my very first (indie) published book, Making Friends with Ghosts. With no expectation other than getting my story off my chest and onto the page, I spent every free moment over the course of a year penning the story of how becoming a paranormal investigator saved my life after PPD.

It was bizarre and esoteric, and I was (rightly so, though not for the first time) deemed weird by lots of people. But the truth was, in exploring an unusual interest, I was able to remember I was a person before I was a mother. It made for an interesting book, I’m told.

The book was released as an instant Amazon Best New Release in its categories, and I relished in its existence. I attended vendor events, and it thrilled me to see my book in readers’ hands, to read glowing reviews about my lyrical writing and engaging narrative style. It made me greedy, too, not just for praise, but because I missed my writing time. I missed pouring a steaming cup of coconut coffee and retreating to my makeshift office once my kids were in school (I had two by then), and typing away on my laptop. Feeling like I’d spent my creative energy in the nonfiction realm, I tried my hand at fiction for the first time since the silly stories I penned in high school, barely worth mentioning.

My first instinct was to lean into genre writing, namely spicy romance and later, horror. I wrote short stories featuring emotionally mature men encouraging women to become their best selves, while getting steamy in baseball field snack stands, of course. I wrote horror stories in which the women came out on top, victorious over their captors, or lecherous bosses, and the like. I put my writing and self-published titles on social media and found friends in the indie writing community. I ordered and read and reviewed their books, and uncovered a part of myself that felt lighter than what I carried each day, just like I’d come out of PPD. This felt like the next rung on the ladder as I climbed and climbed. The more I poured into writing and learning about the craft, the more energy I had to parent my children with positivity and joy.

Eager for even more experience, and keen to put my background in graphic design to use, I launched my own indie publishing house. I single-handedly edited, formatted, and designed several anthologies of horror and romance featuring my friends in the indie community and beyond. My first indie anthology featured stories from NYT and Amazon Best Sellers Karina Halle and Noelle Ihli, to whom I’d reached out on a whim. I was contacted by Assemble Media to write a horror romance story for their latest magazine. I loved how I spent my days and cherished my new friends, so full of life and creative energy. I even turned to my new community, people I’d never even met in real life, for support when my marriage began to crumble. In the midst of navigating the issues in my personal life, indie authors began sending messages asking me to publish their books.

But as I transitioned to living as a single mother and I started working as an Assistant Store Manager at a Barnes & Noble, my plate was too full. I refused to give indie authors only a sliver of the attention and care their stories deserved, so I shuttered my publishing company. Soon, immersed in new releases and building relationships with publishers and authors in my full-time job, the call back to my own writing was too loud to ignore.

I had been casually polishing a standalone horror novel I’d been writing for a year, and I dove into the query trenches. I honed my query package and synopsis. Long months passed, with a lot of interest and full requests, but I never made it past that point. I decided to study more—not just writing, but querying itself and reading more widely. That’s when I started inhaling books in contemporary literary fiction, namely “weird girl lit.” It changed everything.

I remember finishing Sky Daddy by Kate Folk, and staring at the wall, feeling shivers up my arms. The freedom in the prose, the wild, messy ending, and chaotic but poignant interiority—I’d never read anything like it. I’ve been a weird girl my entire life, always feeling other, socially awkward, overthinking everything I’d said at a party after the fact, until my shower water ran cold. At the time, it seemed my horror romance might die in the trenches, so why not? Why not try to write something new and fresh?

I wrote Holidays Are For Other People in three months, edited with beta reader feedback a month later. And before I knew it, I was querying two books at once: my Horror Romance set in Key West, Florida, and my new Contemporary Literary Fiction manuscript about a 30-something woman whose best friend was an AI chatbot, comped to Sky Daddy and Margo’s Got Money Troubles.

Three months later, a Canadian agent with whom I felt an instant kinship just from reading her manuscript wishlist reached out while I was on my way to Canada to see Niagara Falls for the first time. (Kismet?) She wanted my full manuscript. A week later, an email, originally sent to my Spam folder(!): she loved my story, read it in a day, and wanted to set up a call with me to discuss Holidays and my career.

My children were in the room with me when I read the email. I jumped up from the couch, crying and screaming. My daughter, then eight, asked, smiling, “Did you get an agent?” My children and I are so close that they instinctively knew the magnitude of what was happening. “Read it! Did I read it wrong?” I cried to my son, who ran to my laptop and read it, a wide smile breaking across his face. “She wants a meeting! She’s going to offer!” We hugged, jumping up and down.

The only thing that was missing in that moment was my romantic partner, who had, the year before, moved around the world from Australia to be at my side and become “Bonus” Dad to my kids. A real-life MMC. At that moment, he walked in and joined us, hugging and crying. I’ll never forget it.

I met with Gemma Paynter of P.S. Literary a few days later, and I knew in my bones I couldn’t sign with anyone else. She got my story; she got me. We agreed on the requisite two-week waiting period between offer and signing.

As fate would have it, my mother, from whom I was estranged, suddenly passed away two days later.

To say those two weeks were filled with the highest highs and the lowest lows does not encapsulate my experience. But I am grateful that through my Dad, my mother was able to hear about my agent offer before she passed. He said she was excited for me. That would have to be enough.

On the day I signed my contract with Gemma, I opened the bottle of champagne that had been in my fridge for over a year, and I wept as I sipped, staring at the big, fat pink clouds in the sky above my home, thinking of all the dominoes that had to fall before this moment.

In a few short weeks, we finish final edits on my wonderfully weird story, the book of my heart, and we send it on submission. And I will follow the thread of my story, grateful for every damn moment.