A little over eight years ago, before she had kids, Megan Tady says her husband, Alex Bartlett, took her on a surprise trip to a health spa in Vermont, where she was treated to work by a massage therapist and some other pampering.
The massage, though, was mostly memorable because the therapist, as Tady recalls, didn’t seem especially invested in the job.
“I could tell she didn’t really want to be there,” said Tady, who runs an Easthampton copywriting and editing business, Word-Lift. “I remember thinking ‘What’s her story? What would she rather be doing? How did she end up here?’”
Fast forward to 2023, and Tady, who also lives in Easthampton, has transformed that brief encounter into her debut novel, “Super Bloom,” a funny, good-hearted story narrated by, well, a massage therapist in a Vermont spa who really doesn’t want to be there.
But that narrator, Joan Johnston, has some other talents, and a big part of the appeal of “Super Bloom” is watching Joan try to overcome her chronic self-doubt — “I’m a top-rated grumbler. I bemoan things. I stew. I bathe in regret” — to find the place she does want to be.
As someone who got a typewriter when she was a kid so that she could write her own stories, the fact that she’s now “a working novelist is a total dream,” Tady, 43, said in a recent interview. She has a second novel underway for the publisher of this first one, Zibby Books in New York.
And though the title of Tady’s debut book might conjure the wildflowers that have blossomed in California this spring following heavy rains, she says it speaks more to the idea of second chances appearing in life, “like seeds laying dormant that will bloom under the right conditions.”
There’s also her trip to the Vermont health spa to consider. “That became the seed of the novel,” she said.
As well, there’s a bit of self-portrait here. Tady says she spent several years working on her book, and at times she wondered if she could really pull it off.
“I definitely went through some phases where I thought ‘Who am I to call myself a writer?’” she said. “But I stuck with it, and I got a lot of support and great feedback from different people, and (the book) actually happened.”
Joan, her novel’s narrator, was once an aspiring writer herself. But after drifting through a succession of uninspiring jobs in her early and mid 20s, she decided to train as a massage therapist, in part because her oldest friend, Cher, had done the same thing, later opening a successful business in the town of Newchester, in southern Vermont.
But temperamentally, Joan isn’t the best fit for the job. Too many of the often-demanding clients where she works, the Apex Inn & Spa in Newchester, get on her nerves, and her corporate-style boss, Tara, seems to have it in for her.
Joan, now 34, is also deep in debt from attending massage school, and worse, she still hasn’t gotten over the loss of her boyfriend, Samuel, a fellow massage therapist who died two years earlier in a bicycling accident. The two had imagined opening their own business, but now Joan finds herself drifting and isolated.
But if Joan sounds like a downer as a narrator, think again. Tady has a light touch and finds a good balance between grief, humor and tenderness, making Joan an easy person to root for.
Tady has also built an engaging plot, in which Joan, on the verge of getting fired, accepts an offer from one of the spa’s toughest clients, Carmen Bronze, a bestselling romance author from New York. In return for some inside dirt at the spa that she wants to use for her next novel, Carmen will give Joan $5,000 and a glowing review for her massage.
“I know nothing about your industry,” says Carmen, who outside of her books is about as romantic as a rusty ax. “I need someone on the ‘inside’ to tell me about it… Don’t get fancy. Just barf everything up on paper.”
Carmen expects three notebooks of this inside stuff, and she’s adamant about something else: Joan absolutely cannot use any of this material to write her own novel, or Carmen will sue her pants off.
Tady has a lot of fun with the “dirt” that Joan writes up, including descriptions of some of her least favorite clients, like the ones who “sit up naked after the massage, dangle their legs over the table, and want me to give them a play-by-play of what I discovered about their fascia.”
“If I protest or look away, they say ‘Don’t worry, I’m really comfortable with my body,’” Joan writes. “Okay, but I’m not. The sheet over you is not just for your modesty but also mine. Just because I’m touching your bare skin doesn’t mean I want to get flashed.”
But taking notes for Carmen reignites Joan’s interest in writing, and before long she’s working on her own romance novel, drawn in part on her relationship with Samuel. The burst of creativity gives her a means for dealing with her grief, and it also allows her to open up a bit more to her co-workers and the other people around her.
That includes her parents, who live in a nearby town and want to see their daughter succeed but don’t know how that might happen. Her father has gently coaxed her for years to take up writing again, and Joan has always dismissed the idea, leaving her feeling bad.
“I experience the same feeling I always have after I see my parents: a collision of tenderness and regret, loving them deeply and wishing I had been more tolerant.”
Now, though, Joan will really need people in her corner, because if Carmen finds out she’s been spending time writing her own book rather than doing the “research” she had agreed to produce, there could be hell to pay.
Finding her way
Tady, who grew up in Nebraska and studied journalism and international relations in college, came to the area about 20 years ago with a former boyfriend who was getting a masters degree. She did freelance journalism for a time, she says, but couldn’t make it work as a full-time job.
However, she parlayed that experience into doing freelance editorial work for different clients, including some of the local colleges, and then started her own business. But in the back of her mind, she notes, she wanted to write a book.
She says she got a lot of help in particular from Dori Ostermiller, founding director of the area group Writers in Progress, taking some classes with her.
“I wrote my first pages (of the novel) in that space, and Dori read my first draft and gave me really good feedback,” Tady said.
She also drew on her journalism background, finding massage therapists from a range of workplaces to interview for background for “Super Bloom.”
Then, a few years ago, she connected with Zibby Books, founded by New York writer and podcast host Elizabeth “Zibby” Owens; it’s a small publishing house that works closely with its authors by releasing just one title each month.
And talk about a small world: One upcoming book from the publisher is by Sarah Sawyer, who teaches writing and directs the writing center at the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton.
Tady and Sawyer didn’t know each other, but they were introduced through Zibby Books and are now “great friends,” says Tady, who lives right around the corner from Williston.
“One of the best parts of this whole experience has been making all these connections with new people and writers,” she said. “I feel really blessed.”
And, she noted in a follow-up email, she’s glad her two children, ages 7 and 4, were able to see her work so long on her book and succeed with it. “They’ve watched me cry and laugh and celebrate through this experience, and be really vulnerable. I’m grateful for that.”
Megan Tady will read from and discuss “Super Bloom” at the Southampton Library on May 23 at 5:30 p.m. She’ll also read from the book on June 22 at 7 p.m. at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, where she’ll be joined in conversation by Sarah Sawyer.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.