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Hey there! You're reading the Tuesday Telegrams, a bimonthly newsletter from author Naseem Jamnia. Every other Tuesday, I send out a Telegram that's either writing related or a personal essay. You're currently reading a writing-related Telegram, which is where I give updates on projects, behind-the-scenes look at my work, craft discussions, recent publications, event news, and other publishing things.

In my last writing newsletter, I promised to talk about Sleepaway, my work-for-hire project coming from Aladdin in 2025—but more specifically to talk about IP/WFH projects in general.

When you hear the term IP—intellectual property—for most people, it brings to mind an established franchise that has books or stories set in those franchises. Those Disney Twisted Tales? IP. Star Wars books? IP. Magic the Gathering books, Dragon Age comics, Marvel stuff—if something isn't being written by a staff writer (but still technically even then), it's IP work.

But IP is the general term for any intellectual property, meaning that if someone comes up with an idea and hires a ghostwriter, that idea-generator retains the copyright for the project because it's their intellectual property. To avoid confusion with well-known IPs, a lot of people will call these "work for hire" projects.

IP/WFH can (and often does) come from editors at publishing houses or those within the media franchise. They can also come from a book packager, a company that, as the name implies, "packages" projects—comes up with them, hires the writer, sells the project to a publisher. (I'll use "packager" to refer to the IP holder from here on.) I imagine the amount of freedom or guidance on a project depends on the packager and the project (and how experienced the writer is).

A lot of authors get their debuts via packagers. As most (if not all) packagers represent themselves, you don't necessarily need an agent in order to get a WFH project. (Of course, it's always advisable because an agent is the advocate for their author and can negotiate the contract.) Some packagers have open submissions, asking for a writing sample to keep on file and keep you in a pool of writers they reach out to. Some accept applications for specific projects—like mine. (More on that soon.)

The wild thing is how many big books have come out of packagers. The Tristan Strong series, for example, was from a packager. Gossip Girl came from a packager. While the author gets the (rightfully deserved!) credit, they don't necessarily get the money associated with the fame that these books come with depending on their contract. However, a publication is a publication, and if the book does well, that opens door for future project as well.

Sleepaway came across my radar because Upswell, the packager, reached out to my agency (probably among others) to encourage Aevitas authors to apply for one of their projects. Upswell was founded by a current agent and a former agent, and at that time they were brand new. At least for these early projects, Upswell was asking for auditions, sending out information on the project and asking for the first chapter in return.

So in the summer of 2020, I put together two applications for two different middle grade projects that Upswell was looking to fill. One was a secondary world fantasy; the other was Sleepaway.

The materials I got were pretty thorough, and I'm not sure how usual that is—especially since even between the two, Sleepaway had more background. The project not only had a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, it also explicitly talked about character arcs and worldbuilding.

Sleepaway is the story of an 11-year-old budding biologist who convinces her overbearing parents to let her go to an overnight summer camp with her best friend. She hopes going to camp will give her an opportunity to reinvent herself; after a lifetime of bullying and relying on her best friend to protect and defend her, the protagonist hopes to balance her anxiety with recreating herself. There, she and her bestie make new friends, and together, they discover a mysterious glow in the woods leading to a clearing. When they fall asleep there, they're transported to a dream world they think they can control—until their nightmares also come to life. But there's also a sinister mystery behind this place and the camp as a whole, which the group finds out when aforementioned bestie stops acting like herself.

I was drawn to the story and characters right away, as long as I was allowed to put my spin on it. For the purposes of the first chapter audition, I mostly followed the brief, but I knew I'd want to fiddle more if I was chosen.

And then I was! It felt extremely validating since we hadn't sold anything at that point. The folks at Upswell liked the changes I had decided, things that made it a Naseem story even though it was WFH: I made the protagonist and her best friend mixed race (and one of the other two remaining main characters Black, so that the whole gang is BIPOC), and queered said best friend. The plan was for me to write half of the book and to go on submission with a proposal for the rest. So that's what we did, sending it out in Fall 2021.

But it didn't sell.

We reevaluated; the feedback from editors was, shockingly (sarcastic—it wasn't a surprise), all over the place. (They overwhelmingly loved the BIPOC and queer rep, though, so I felt very smug about that.) Upswell asked me to rewrite the perspective from a close third to first. Given that I haven't been 11 in 20 years, the task was daunting.

But luckily, the folks at Upswell liked my take on my anxious bean of a main character, and we sent it back out again—finally getting a bite and offer at the top of the year. Of course, while my name will be on the title, Upswell still holds the copyright and gets the majority of the advance money. They're the ones negotiating the contract rather than my agent, but my editor at Aladdin is eager to work with me, so I'm confident this will open more doors.

I'm no IP/WFH expert, but hopefully, this illuminated some of the process behind that!

Qilwa Corner: Mushrooms 🍄

I was trying to figure out what to write for this week's Qilwa Corner, when it occurred to me: mushrooms. (Although, if I'd been smart, I would have talked about runes instead to coincide with the reveal at the bottom of this Telegram. Alas!)

Mushrooms come up twice in The Bruising of Qilwa, both in reference to the same thing. Afsoneh asks whether environmental magic is "what the Academy people do on the forbidden islands." Firuz responds:

Later, when Firuz and Kofi go to see the governor, Firuz looks out at the island from the top of the governor's hill: "From another view, might they see the mystic mushrooms on the uninhabited Qilwan islands, towering into the sky?"

When I was working on copyedits for Qilwa, I realized I needed to lay worldbuilding foundations for future works in the same universe. (I've talked before about how I feel like that somewhat backfired, especially because we were several months into marketing before we realized none of our promo materials mentioned I'd be coming back to this world.) I also had to flesh out things I'd previously sort of waved away as "not important."

Qilwan economics isn't ultimately important in The Bruising of Qilwa, but I realized that if nothing else, I needed to have an understanding of how this tiny island city-state could be such a economic—and in this case, mercantile—powerhouse. Maybe one day I'll return to Qilwa as a setting, but regardless, there are Qilwan characters in future stories.

Qilwa was incorporated into the Sassanian Empire as one of its early conquests. A key narrative about the empire is that they didn't come in "violently" but rather "shared culture" and resources. (This is still colonization, folks.) Qilwa has always been a trade hub, and when it's so close to the coast of what would later become Dilmun (the seat of the Sassanian Empire), it was inevitably going to be swallowed. There's a whole mythology to that, too, but to the issue at hand: understanding why Qilwa is so rich and what Sassanid as an empire could offer the island would help me better understand this fraught history.

My geologist husband (and creative consultant) told me about Prototaxites, a genus of fungi that existed before trees evolved. They formed giant trunk-like "stems" that got up to 8 meters in height. Freaking amazing!!!

We brainstormed: what if Qilwa wasn't just a single island, but a group of islands home to these huge-ass mushrooms? What if human contamination and introduction of foreign organic matter killed off the mushrooms on the main Qilwan island? If Prototaxites died off with the evolution of trees, it didn't feel implausible to have a similar set up.

So Qilwa is not an island but a set of islands, with only one of them as habitable, and scientists have cordoned off the other islands for the sake of research and preserving these delicate structures that are so key to the Qilwan economy.

And the thing that I totally wish I could have included and explored is this: Qilwan merchant vessels are self-healing. That's a huge part of why their mercantile class is so strong: their ships can repair themselves! Because fungi are awesome and I completely believe that in a magical world, there can be fungi that heal their fruits (which is what a mushroom is) via an incredible immune system. (Did you know plants have immune systems? They do! So fungi, with their mycelium networks and importance in overall ecosystem health likely do too.)

I don't know enough about merchants and sailing to pull a Robin Hobb and make my own liveships, but this feels like a nice attempt anyway.

Upcoming Events

If you're in the Reno area, great news! TOMORROW, March 8, from 1-2:30pm at the Sparks Public Library, I'll be giving a talk on the path of traditional publishing. More information and suggested (free) registration here!

Recent Reviews

The Bruising of Qilwa was nominated for the Subjective Chaos Kind Of Award, which has such a terrific name that I don't think any other award will be able to top it! I'm honored to be on this list alongside so many amazing author friends and books. The list of Nebula Award nominees also releases tonight, and I am crossing fingers and toes without any expectations.

This isn't a recent review at all, but it's officially been announced, so it's what I'll leave you with: the book box that is featuring Qilwa in a new hardcover is Rainbow Crate! I shared the exclusive art that will be the cover/in the end pages in the last writing Telegram, but I want to share my favorite part of this new edition.

The runes in the world of Qilwa are mostly calligraphy, and Jaime over at Rainbow Crate designed the hardcover itself to look like a world-relevant spellbook—which means it looks like a book of Persian poetry (called a divaan).

My favorite part about this favorite part? My dad did the calligraphy. That is my FATHER'S HANDWRITING on the book. Farsi calligraphy is an art form—it's not like writing something in cursive; it's something people train in. He and my mother spent ages thinking about how to translate the title into Farsi so that the connotations of "bruising" came through. This is more meaningful to me than anything else that could possibly exist. I'm honestly tearing up just writing this.

The world is, as always, crap, so I'm going to take a line from how I used to sign my Telegrams off (and maybe should go back to saying?): stay safe and love each other.

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