Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. It will be a hodgepodge of sense and senses. The senses will include pictures, videos, recipes and the odd political rant that makes sense to me. It will include excerpts from my new novel, "The Straw Buyer", a work still in progress, that you will be able to comment on, along with all the other entries. I will try to make it diverse enough to keep you coming back.

Wednesday 17 July 2013

Finally, my new novel, The Straw Buyer, is available as an eBook in all the eBookstores for only $3.99. For more about it, here is a short video describing it.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

After the rejections

I have ignored this blog for much too long as I put it aside to finish writing The Straw Buyer. I suppose that I subconsciously hoped that my next posting would announce that I had found an incredible agent to represent my novel. It never happened. That was not for a lack of trying. I wrote to over a hundred agents who specialize in this genre, being careful to follow their submission guidelines demanded on their websites. One notable stipulation that they all shared was a summary of authors’ previous successes. What had I published in the past and how many copies were sold? What marketing tools would I add to help sell the book? A blog? Good, how many followers do you have? Five, you say?

Most agents replied with form rejections that appeared to have been written by the same person. Some were very kind. Many didn’t reply at all. A few actually asked for partial or complete submissions of the manuscript then waited months before saying that it wasn’t for them. Were they hanging on to it just in case they might possibly use it if nothing better would come along? Finally, one agent offered to represent me provided that I take an ax to the beginning and murder my first character within the first few pages. I sharpened my knife and went at it with a vengeance. My knife dulled quickly as I felt that I was cutting the heart out of my story. I pared the beginning, indiscriminately slashed thousands of words, looked at it again, and hated the results. I finally settled on a place in-between.


Before resubmitting to the agent, I purchased a novel he had written and couldn’t finish it. I asked myself if he was the right person to represent my writing and concluded that I might be better off on my own. He had already made it clear to me that any success my book might potentially receive would be dependant on my ability to sell it. He explained that it was the new reality in today’s publishing climate. So that is exactly what I intend to do; publish it myself as an eBook. Watch for it soon at an eRetailer near you.