January: I found Blogger. Closed my website. Sent out numerous query letters to literary agents. Came down the flu; missed three days of work.February: Sent several queries to literary agents and small press publishers. Received a couple of rejections for last month's batch.
March: Fell off a ladder in the stockroom at work and hurt my right knee; missed one day of work. Submitted a short story to several magazines. Sent queries to literary agents, small press publishers, and editors.
April: A literary agent's assistant requested the full manuscript of my mystery novel, Smoke on the Water. Two weeks later, she emailed a form rejection stating she couldn't connect with the voice. The same voice I used in the query and a 5-page sample? That voice?
May: Some things in life are a crapshoot, but you can't have great rewards without taking risks, and you can't move forward if you remain caught up in the old ways of doing business. You have to take control of your own destiny. So…after twelve years of trying to find representation for my work, the time had come for me to stop wasting my time, paper, ink, envelopes, and postage querying everyone under the sun. I stopped sending out email queries, as well. Thought a lot about the pros and cons of epublishing. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
June: I fed twelve years worth of rejection letters to a paper shredder [over 700]. I had saved every single letter in the hope that one day, after signing with an agent, I'd have a huge bonfire and make smores to celebrate. [http://www.ehow.com/how_2000849_make-smores.html] I deleted all emailed correspondence. Shredded nine spiral notebooks containing the names and contact information of agents, publishers, and editors. Shredded every version of my query letters and synopses. Deleted all blog links for agents, publishers, and everything else writing-related. What an exhilarating experience to witness the end of a long and tiring journey through Query Hell. [See Feb. post My Journey To Publication]
July: Began the first draft of Serial Quiller. Unknowingly handled poison oak in the backyard; missed a full week of work. Sheesh.
August: Took a nice break from book stuff.
September: Worked on Serial Quiller. Day in and day out, until it was done. Researched a new location for Serial Quiller 2.
October: Finished the final draft of Serial Quiller. Designed and created the cover art. Put the story on Amazon around Halloween.
November: Rewrote Smoke on the Water. Made the cover. Put the story on Amazon.
December: Never heard back from any of the magazines where I submitted the short story. Never received any good news from agents, publishers or editors, either. I worked on the second books in the Point Jove and Bad Mojo series. Worked on a standalone mystery novel, titled Notch, which I'm also adapting to a screenplay.
January 2011: For the first time in twelve years, I'll wake up on January 1 with the knowledge that I don't have to prepare a new batch of queries to send out on January 2. I'll begin New Year's Day with two books available to a wide audience in the US and the UK.
I am very happy to see 2010 come to an end…because…2011 is going to be amazing.
Cheers
