Greenlighting Yourself
Tenacity Tales: Tess Rafferty
Tess Rafferty’s resume reads like a choose-your-own adventure of the tenacious arts.
She’s been a comedian.
An actress.
A writer and producer for television.
A dancing maxi pad on The Soup.
And she’s also the author of Recipes for Disasters, a culinary memoir put out by MACMILLAN in 2012.
But because I’m a working novelist and an aspiring published novelist, it’s Rafferty’s tenure as the author of the Kat Kelly murder mysteries that have have earned her my coveted TAF award.
But the road to Kat Kelly was a bit of a bumpy ride, both for Rafferty and the world.
In 2016 Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States.
Two days later, Rafferty released a video reaction about the election in which she took Trump voters to task for voting for the candidate endorsed by the KKK and eulogized her own politeness.
“For the rest of your lives you will know that you voted the same way as the KKK,” Tess says in the video. “Does that feel good to you? (Here’s a hint: it really shouldn’t, especially if you’re Christian.)
“I'm tired of pussy footing around what offends your morals while couching what offends mine. Because racism and homophobia and misogyny and xenophobia offend mine.”
Needless to say the gunch put of a video—which can be viewed in its entirely here—went viral, and Rafferty went to work phone banking, marching, and using her platform to inspire folks to defend democracy.
But even tenacious AF advocates need a little time to rest and recharge, so Rafferty found solace in reading mysteries.
“I’ve always loved murder mysteries,” she said, “but I started really blowing through them during the Trump years. There’s something cathartic about reading a murder mystery that promises you that the villain will see justice by the end of the book or the show.”
Enter a fateful trip to the tiny medieval Italian village of Calpalbio.
After posting a photo from her trip online—an artsy black and white of her and her husband looking all fancy and mysterious—a friend commented that Tess and her husband looked like they were one murder mystery away from being Nick and Nora Charles, the part-time detectives and full time feisty lovers made famous in a series of books by Dashiell Hammett and immortalized in a series of early Hollywood movies.
“And I said, ‘Or one book away—someone should write it!’” Rafferty says. “And so I did.”
Getting her first Kat Kelly mystery published, though, was a different story.
Though her memoir Recipes for Disaster was published by Macmillan in 2012, Under the Tuscan Gun, the first in what would turn out to be the five-books-and-counting series experienced a frustratingly circuitous submission story that will be all too familiar to writers in the murky middle of their careers—Rafferty’s agent loved Under the Tuscan Gun and the editors Rafferty’s agent submitted to also loved Under the Tuscan Gun, but because the novel was wry, set in Italy, and included a murder, those same editors said they weren’t sure what shelf the book would sit on, so no one pulled the trigger on buying it.
Even though the television rights had already been snapped up.
Even though Rafferty was an supervising producer on The Soup.
Even though her essay about the Trump fallout had gone massively viral.
Even though.
Even though.
Even though.
So Rafferty took stock.
She’d gone the big five route and she’d done most of the leg work herself: she hired her own publicist; her advance went to her publicists; and the memoir’s cover art was her concept, her costume, her photographer.
“We love that validation of publishing, but it’s not the world it used to be,” Rafferty said. “They won’t take risks greenlighting new voices. They want a sure thing. They don’t want to put resources behind it. But now there are all these great tools for self publishing—they make it so easy—so I decided to greenlight myself.”
Tess Rafferty on choosing to self-publish her Kat Kelly murder mystery series:
“I decided to greenlight myself.”
And greenlight herself she did.
In October, 2020, Rafferty published Under the Tuscan Gun.
In December of that same year, she published Buon Fatale: A Kat Kelly Holiday Novelette.
In November, 2021, Rafferty published The Red, the Fed, and the Dead.
In November, 2022, Rafferty published To Lie in the Sun.
And last month she finished a draft of her fifth Kat Kelly mystery—working title, Terror Firma—which will be published in the fall of this year.
Her pace may seem breakneck, but she credits her devotion to strict discipline. She turns her phone off—internet too—and sets a timer for an hour.
“I can do anything for an hour,” Rafferty says. “And when the timer goes off, I’m free to get up and step away, but usually I start the timer again. And I do that for three to four hours a day.”
And in three to four hours a day, Rafferty can write a draft in about three months—she worked on her most recent draft from March 21st to May 30th of this year and revised it over the summer—and she did it all without planning.
“My main character has my sensibilities and somehow stumbles upon a murder in every location I’ve ever been, but I don’t do a lot of planning around the plot before I sit down to write. I’m inspired by an opening scene,” Rafferty says. “After seeing this festival for Santa Restituta on a recent trip to Lacco Ameno, on the island of Ischia—this saint who was lit on fire and set sail on the sea—I had this image of a an opening scene of a body on the beach. And if this woman was killed, I asked myself why someone wanted to kill her. From there I figured out my closed structure and loosely decided what everyone’s potential motive for killing her was. Then I start to write, filling in the details as I hone. When I need to go back, I go back.”
Rafferty grins.
“No one’s going to teach this technique, but it’s is what works for me,” Rafferty said.
But it’s not enough that greenlighting herself and publishing a book a year is working for Rafferty—she hopes it’s working for her readers, too.
“The world’s a fucking slog right now,” she said. “I wrote [the Kat Kelly books] because I wanted to give people a good time.”
Tenacity Tales is HIBOU’s monthly celebration of all the tiny tenacities in a writerly life. If you have a tenacity tale you’d like to share, comment below or send me your pitch at hibou@substack.com. To learn more about what we’re looking for, read the original Tenacity Tale here.
Yessss!! Thank you for sharing this story. I’m totally gonna check out her books!