Mills alum boasts successful book debut

Okay...here goes nothing! Hope you ladies enjoy!

Alumna author gets Frosted
The Campanil
September 20, 2020

In 2010, Kelsey Lindquist graduated from Mills College with a degree in Creative Writing. Next week she'll return to campus for her 10th Reunion, bringing along copies of her debut novel, Frosted, to be shared and sold at the Reunion Literary Salon. Lindquist also plans to donate ten signed copies of Frosted, along with a fraction of the book's proceeds, to the Mills English department, as a way of thanking the professors who she says got her where she is today.

"This book wouldn't exist had it not been for the incredible guidance, and the patience, support, and encouragement, of my professors and colleagues at Mills," Lindquist said. "The very least I can do is give back just a little bit of what they gave to me."

Frosted, which hit bookshelves on 5/15/20 (ten years to the day after Lindquist's Mills graduation), combines several themes one wouldn't normally expect to see all in one book, including adoption, airplane phone chats, and cake decorating. Lindquist said that each component of the book reflects some aspect of her own life, so that the book tells her story in a round-about sort of way.

"All of the characters are totally fictional, and so are most of the events, but everything is based off of something important to me," she said. "A lot of the characters are based off of people in my life, and the events come either from things that really happened to me, things that I wish would happen to me, or things that are completely random, like my favorite TV shows."

The book was published by MacAdam-Cage Publishers in San Francisco, a small publishing house whose aim is to take new works, ones that haven't been seen by eyes other than the author's (and perhaps some family members or mentors) and help them see success on the market. Lindquist interviewed for an internship at MacAdam-Cage the summer before her senior year at Mills, but ultimately took a position elsewhere. However, "The mission of MacAdam-Cage stuck with me, especially in a time when the publishing industry was hit so hard by the recession, because it's a place where they find success in the most unlikely of places."

"We see so many interns and prospective interns come through our doors that it's impossible to keep track of them all, or to stay disappointed for very long when one of them leaves us," said MacAdam-Cage Assistant publicist Melissa Serpa. "But it's so nice to know that even if they don't stick around, that interns remember us, come back later, and get published themselves."

In its first four months on the market, Frosted has sold roughly 20,000 copies, Lindquist estimates. She hopes sales will have doubled by the end of this year. The books she plans to donate to Mills are particularly special, she says, because they were taken out of the very first batch of advance reading copies that were sent to her. She pointed out her signature at the bottom of the Dedications page, underneath the names of her immediate family members and the Mills professors who she says helped her become the writer she is today.

"See, I signed it right there for a reason," she said. "These guys are the ones who made this book possible, and by signing off on the dedication, I'm signing off on my dedication to them, in a way." She laughed. "A little corny, I know, but that's just how I think."

"She gives us way too much credit," said one Mills professor, who wished to remain anonymous. "True, we helped her here and there along the way while she was, but ten years later, here's a book she wrote herself. I give her full credit, she deserves it. She still doubts herself at times, but has to be confident in the fact that she deserves this."

Lindquist has allowed herself a few months to rest and reflect since the publication of Frosted, and is now in the beginning stages of writing her second novel, a memoir about her summers spent with family on Santa Catalina Island as a child.

"It's something totally different, yes," she said. "But I like to keep things interesting!"