Toronto author's bestselling novel The Maid started as an idea on a napkin

Canadian author Nita Prose's debut novel, The Maid, became a New York Times and Canadian bestseller just a few weeks after its Jan. 4 release.

The longtime Toronto editor is currently the vice president and editorial director at Simon & Schuster — a publishing house that's home to renowned authors such as home body and milk and honey author Rupi Kaur, and Long Way Down and Look Both Ways author Jason Reynolds, among others.

"The day [The Maid] was published was a really important moment because it was no longer mine. It was now something that belonged to the readers," Prose told CBC News. "I'll never read it the same way again."

Prose is the latest industry professional to become a best-selling author, following in the footsteps of fellow Canadian Ashley Audrain and her debut novel, The Push, which came out in 2021.

LISTEN | Why Nita Prose calls her novel The Maid a 'murder mystery with a lot of heart:'

The Maid, published by Penguin Random House Canada, is a gripping mystery about an awkward yet perfectionist hotel maid, Molly, who becomes the lead suspect in a murder case after finding a dead man in his hotel room. 

"This is a novel about what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different. I think of it as a whodunit," Prose said. 

"It's maybe a little bit different, too, because the mystery can only be solved through a connection to the human heart in Molly."

In 2019, Prose was staying at a hotel during a business trip in London. One evening, when she returned to her room, she says she completely startled the hotel's maid.

"I remember her stepping back into a shadowy corner, and the embarrassing part is she had in her hands my track pants, which like a fool I had left in a tangled mess on my bed."

It was then Prose realized how being a maid was such an intimate and invisible job. On the plane ride back home, her main character came to her like a "lightning bolt," she said.

"Molly's voice was clean and crisp and precise. I didn't have any paper so I grabbed the napkin from under my drink and I wrote the prologue to The Maid in a single burst," she said.  

"I didn't realize that I was actually starting my debut novel."

Novels like The Maid can do well as a debut thanks to planning and timing, said Haley Cullingham, a senior editor at Hazlitt and Strange Light and editor-at-large at McClelland & Stewart, based in Toronto.