We Inherit More Than Money
Pillow Bar founder Merrimac Dillon on family secrets, her first novel, and the dream she carried quietly for over 20 years.
There are people who build one beautiful thing and consider the matter closed. Merrimac Dillon is not one of them. She founded The Pillow Bar after her husband had back surgery and she could not find him anything comfortable to recover on. When no manufacturer could make what she had in mind, she designed and patented her own equipment in her garage. The company went to QVC, to Oprah's Favorite Things, and into homes all over the country. She sold it in 2022 and did not retire.
For most of my life, you have known me as an entrepreneur. What you may not have known is the other dream that quietly lived in my heart for decades. I wanted to write a novel.
That dream is now a book. Our founder, Dale Janée, who has known Merrimac for a decade after meeting in Dallas, had the chance to interview her about this new chapter. Moss in the Oaks is a Southern family saga set beneath the moss draped oaks of New Orleans, weaving together love, ambition, loyalty, and the secrets that shape generations. It publishes February 2, 2027 from Resolve Editions, distributed by Simon & Schuster, and it is the first of a series about the DuBois family.
We are partial to a good second act around here. We are especially partial to a woman who spent twenty-five years thinking about what people rest their heads on. She talked to us about family, seating charts, pre-orders, and where a woman with two patents draws the line on artificial intelligence.
Pre-Order Moss in the Oaks
Pre-order now and Merrimac will send you a free gift: a satin pillowcase or an O-ring keyring. Upload your receipt at merrimacdillon.com to claim it.
Limited to the first 450 orders.
Pre-Order and Claim Your GiftHardcover, $28.00. Pre-orders are the single most useful thing a reader can do for a debut author, and the reason why is further down this page.
A world she never had to research
Merrimac is a third generation New Orleanian. Most novelists writing about old New Orleans money would spend a year in the archives first.
‘The family is fictional, but the world they move through I already knew. I have always paid attention to family dynamics.’
It shows in the specifics: the unwritten rules of Mardi Gras, the enduring weight of a family name, the elegance of the Garden District, the quiet arithmetic of who sits where. New Orleans in this book is not a postcard, it is a character.
What she did not expect was how completely the family would take her over. She writes without an outline, no framework at all, and simply follows them.
‘I sit down, I start writing, and the story comes. These characters have become real people to me. I can sit down at nine in the morning and the next thing I know it is four in the afternoon.’
These characters have become real people to me.
What a family hands down
The story begins when Elizabeth DuBois is summoned home expecting a medical crisis and finds something far worse. Her father, the formidable patriarch of the DuBois empire, is dying, and with his final breath he rewrites the fate of his family and their livelihood. Buried betrayals surface. Loyalties shift. Ask Merrimac what the book is about underneath all of that, and she does not say grief, or money, or secrets, though all three are in it. She says something better.
‘We inherit more than just money. We inherit ideas about who we are supposed to be in life.’
That is the line readers keep coming back to her about, and why one particular Louisiana dynasty lands for people who have never been south of anywhere. Every family passes down a set of instructions about who you are allowed to become. Most of us never notice we are carrying them.
Kismet at a dinner table
The path to her publisher was not a path. It was a seating chart.
I was at the Tulane book festival, seated next to a literary agent from Dallas. I had just finished my first manuscript, and she said, ‘send it to me’. She had recently left a large agency and was building her own list, so the timing was hers as much as mine.
I thought it was divine intervention. Kismet.
What happened next? She hired an editor. They spent six months getting the manuscript into the best possible condition before anyone at a publishing house saw a page. Then her agent took it out.
The same problem in a different aisle
Merrimac is clear eyed about what a publisher does and does not do for a debut author.
With a traditional publisher, unless you are a celebrity or already a best selling author, you aren't a priority. There are trade publication reviews and there is earning the attention of the bookstore buyers. It is what we did at The Pillow Bar, one retail door at a time. The people who make it into Barnes and Noble are the ones who put everything into it.
She does not find this discouraging, because she has done it before, and because she never expected the work to be solitary in the first place.
Nothing in the entrepreneurial world is done alone. And this is much like that, you need the agent, the editor, the publisher, the booksellers. It takes a whole team either way.
The same problem in a different aisle.
Which brings us to the least glamorous and most useful thing she said all afternoon. If you intend to buy her book, buy it now rather than later.
Pre-sales determine how many copies the stores will actually order. They also determine how much the publisher puts into the review process and into marketing to the trade. Everyone is watching that number before the book is even out.
- Pre-order Moss in the Oaks from any retailer.
- Upload your receipt at merrimacdillon.com.
- Choose your gift: a satin pillowcase or an O-ring keyring.
- First 450 orders only. When they are gone, they are gone.
Where she draws the line on AI
Publishing is in an uproar over artificial intelligence just now. Deals have been canceled, detection tools are being waved around, and nobody has agreed on a rule. Merrimac holds two patents. She is not a woman who flinches at new machinery. Her position is still clear.
The writing is mine and it stays mine. Audiobooks are their own world, only a couple of companies distribute them, and nobody there will touch AI.
The marketing is a different conversation entirely. Breaking out in the book world is genuinely hard. I will use every tool that is not the writing itself.
She is not finished with them
The DuBois family has more books in it. She is already circling the next one. The next book may belong to the grandchildren.
Savvy Travels: New Orleans
I am not going to pretend to be an expert. New Orleans is simply one of my favorite places in the world to visit, and after this conversation we have a whole new list to work through. Here is what I can tell you already.
Go in the fall. I cannot say this strongly enough. The heat has finally broken, the sky turns that particular blue, and you can walk all day without wilting. You also get the decorating, which in this city is a competitive sport.
And a word for anyone traveling with small people: the hotels in the French Quarter were the real discovery. Beautiful old rooms, very good beds, and one extremely happy toddler who considered the whole thing her personal kingdom.
Pre-Order Moss in the Oaks
February 2, 2027. Pre-order now, upload your receipt at merrimacdillon.com, and choose a free satin pillowcase or O-ring keyring.
Limited to the first 450 orders.
Pre-Order and Claim Your Gift