A compelling story of desperate housewives may be a novel innovation for television, but it’s always been a good story for a novel. The novelty in publishing is to defy genre, and a new specimen is “Desperate Pastors’ Wives” by Ginger Kolbaba and Christy Scannell, associate editor of San Diego Metropolitan and North Park News.
With a title like that, is it Christian literature or chicklit? “Our book falls into the genre they call sassy lit,” says Scannell. “But it’s women’s fiction. It’s about four women dealing with losing faith, feeling like their husbands don’t love them anymore, being torn between caring for a family and their profession and feeling like they have too much going on in their lives.”
Scannell says the book will appeal to anyone who goes to church, and Christians are big book buyers. “That’s why all the big publishing houses have either bought or started Christian book publishers,” she says.
Simon & Schuster bought the book’s publisher, Howard Books, last year. But Kolbaba and Scannell have no desperate stories of having to wait. While both are editors (collaborating by e-mail while living in different states), “Desperate Pastors’ Wives” was their first tome and they made their first sale on their first pitch to their first publisher.
“We marched in, never having written fiction in our lives, but we knew the editors and heard they were looking for fiction,” says Scannell. “It’s very unusual — it’s almost embarrassing.” More embarrassment may follow; 3,000 copies have been presold in a niche where 15,000 would be a huge success. And the book is the first in a three-book deal already inked with Howard.
Neither Kolbaba nor Scannell is a pastor’s wife. But Scannell guarantees pastors’ wives will be entertained. “Desperate Pastors’ Wives” ($12.95, 320pp.) ships March 20.
— Terence J. Burke
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