C’est la vie

Well that hope was short lived. That radio interview at Premier Christian Radio, that I mentioned last week, well there’s been a sudden change of presenter on the breakfast show and I’m just not interesting enough to make the cut. So it’s off into the distant yonder with my pen and paper to watch life and opportunity pass by. What a saddo!
Anyway, I’m over that now *sobs* and back to the writing. Finished off the first section of the current novel, ‘The Cord’ at around 67 000 words and on with the next.
It’s a strange game writing. Those of us that do it regular *fnar* all want to be published else we would not edit and polish as best we can our written work. But do many actually submit to traditional press. I tried for over 15 year (but the books were not that well polished) with no success. Most were returned unopened in the SAE. Rarely would anyone even put a ‘sorry’ note in just shove it in the envelope after keeping the slush pile open with it for 6 months during which time they insist that you do not send it to anyone else: seriously!
With my saga, the one on this site, we have the internet at our disposal and the world of epublishing and POD people printing. I’ve used both to get my work out there and be seen. I have to say that eBooks via smashwords.com have been pretty good with over 600 downloads across the titles. Mostly the free one, The Rising, of course which you can get here. But that’s not to be sniffed at, the fact that my scribblings have actually earned enough to buy my kids some presents is pleasing indeed. I’ve no idea how the saga is selling, if at all, which brings me on to my next point.

Unlike all my previous submissions to publishers and editors this time there was nothing to post. So I set to using a website called firstwriter.com to track down likely candidates for my approach. Now here is my biggest problem of all – I just cannot sell myself to anyone, not prostitution you understand, but as a prospect. I cannot write a good covering letter nor a decent press release, though I have got better at the latter. So after a year of trying I got further than I had before. So I picked the next name of the sheet and just left a short message on their contact page saying that if they wanted to read the novel a sample was downloadable from the site and they could have the rest if they wanted it.

“months later I got an email asking for the rest! Somebody actually wanted to read it” *swoon* 20 years of writing and somebody other than a few friends at the Horsham Writers Circle actually read something. A couple of months later I got the offer to publish from Vamplit Publishing. The edit arrived a few months later which to my pleasant surprise needed very little revision apart from punctuation, which you’ve probably noticed by now is not great. The cover art was by a very nice lady called Sue Midlock. I had my own ideas for a cover, something more traditional and adult (boring) but a day teaching creative writing at my children’s school soon corrected me there.

In the end Emun of Mor was released on Smashwords.com where it is available for a mere $4.99 or you can get it from Apple, Sony etc. etc. but not yet Kindle. My next challenge is to get it reviewed, somewhere. Never mind such is life.