The great part about publishing is the joy and fun of seeing an idea come to life.  To see your words all pretty, bound and staring back at you from the shelf is a real high.  That never gets old.

The bad can come in many different forms.  Sometimes you’re assigned to an editor you don’t love, or your book gets orphaned, or your book gets the ugliest cover ever created (just search Amazon Kindle for Handsome as Sin and you’ll know what I mean).  Of course the ultimate bad is being shunned.  I’ve been shunned but not my fault.  At the time I had a shall we say aggressive agent who completely alienated my editor and that was that.  I was labeled a problem child.  After 30 some books, I couldn’t get a call returned even after I fired said agent.

Now for the confusing part.  It’s one thing to be rejected.  I’ve been rejected a lot over my 20-year career.  Yes, it stings but so far, it has always led to something better.  Maybe not instantly, but in the long run, I’ve landed on my feet.  So what happens if you write a great proposal that your editor loves but can’t buy?  Well, that happened this week.  My editor really liked the idea and the writing but she can’t buy anything from me until she has numbers on my next two books.  One comes out next week; another comes out 10/31/12.  That means numbers will come in sometime in early 2013.  Well, I’m a working writer, so I can’t wait nearly a year for a possible sale.

The solution . . . my agent is now shopping the project in hopes of finding a new publisher.  So far, so good.  She’s getting interest.  That’s the most I can hope for at this point.  Traditional publishing is definitely in flux.  I don’t think any of the big six have decided the best way to deal with the whole electronic revolution.  But that’s not my problem.  I have to go with the flow.

So the point of this little rant is just to show it isn’t always about what you’ve written, or how many (40).  Often other factors play into decisions.  Right now I’m swinging in the breeze but I’m hopeful I’ll land on my feet soon.