Rejections

I received another rejection yesterday for The Pirate's Wraith. It was a very sweet, very well-written rejection, but the basic message was negative. I went to the Liberty States Fiction Writers conference last March and talked to four editors--none of them leaped at the chance to publish my book. I went to the New Jersey Romance Writers conference last month and had interviews with two agents. Both of them have now rejected the book.

Trying to land a publisher or an agent is not an easy task--even though I've written plenty of other books. It's like banging your head against a brick wall, which is why I reissued Prince of the Mist on my own and I am glad I did.

Above is a colorful pie chart from Metric Junkie. It illustrates the sale of my Kindle books at Amazon. Prince of the Mist accounts for half of my Kindle sales this year so far at Amazon. My books have sold at other distributors as well, but Metric Junkie doesn't pick up the statistics from other sites and Metric Junkie only allows me to list ten books.

I look at the chart every now and then to boost my morale. I have not sold a lot of books but there are people willing to download my stories and live in my fantasy worlds for a while.

It is great to have a publisher. Having a professional edit the story and an illustrator design a cover allows me to spend my time writing more stories. I am delighted that the Prism Book Group is going to publish Daddy Wanted, but The Pirate's Wraith is not appropriate for their line.

Oh well. My imagination is far too active.

I may try one more publisher, but if that turns out to be a dead end I'll be releasing The Pirate's Wraith myself. I do not enjoy bashing my head against brick walls.

Fresh Air

Most days I try to take a walk outdoors with hubby. For the past two weeks, I have not gotten much fresh air because my mother is still in the hospital. Her stomach hurt and so she had to go through a bunch of tests for her tummy--ultrasound, CT scan, and an endoscopy--to make sure she did not have any bleeding in her stomach from the overdose of Coumadin. Fortunately, her stomach is fine except for a little inflammation, but she is still very weak because she has not been eating much.

After our hospital visit today, I asked hubby to stop at the park on the way home. It was such a beautiful day and now that it is staying light a little longer, I thought we could take a brief walk. So we did, and I felt much better for it. There's nothing like a walk in the woods to get rid of stress. And it was nice to get the hospital smell out of my nostrils.

I have not done much writing. It's very hard to concentrate on anything right now because I am worried about my mother. I got a rejection from Steeple Hill this past week but it didn't faze me. I have a collection of rejections from Steeple Hill! Perhaps I should frame them all. :^)

I'll just have to send my manuscript elsewhere. I'm sure someone else will be happy with it.