Two happy and Eleven Sad

I've been querying Festival Madness like crazy over the Burning Man Season.  30 queries, and so far 12 rejections.  Man, they are coming back at me like kamikazees.  Form letters, all.  The agents try to create a kind rejection letter, but that is obviously even harder than crafting a good query letter.

In the general gloom of wondering if anyone is ever going to rep this book, I receive a different kind of rejection from a small press publisher.  Yes, it was a form, but it had my name and my book's title  in tiny neat script, very tiny, very neat script and at the bottom was one word.  Sorry!  It was so sweet, because it let me know if came from a real person who maybe understood on a level that a lot of agents do not. It wasn't from the intern or assistant who is the agent's gatekeeper and whose job it is to parse the queries.

So that was a Good Thing, as Martha would say,  to have a small human interaction in this wrenching process.  The other happy thing, a very happy thing, is that when I returned home from a book party tonight (someone else's party, of course), I had a voice mail from a casual friend saying how much he liked The Shadow Warriors.  Totally unexpected.  This is actually someone whose opinion I value.  I don't even know how he got a copy of the book, but I'm so pleased to get a real compliment on my writing.  I've been down about the very snarky, anonymous review someone posted.  You know it's someone you crossed being a bitch, but still. . . it pulls down the average. 

I figure I've logged about a million words by now, and the years go by and writer's come and writer's go and the whole business is pretty crazy. 

In a pensive moment

The suspense novel is almost finished.  The drug lord is on the run to Cuba (and what fun it's been to research that scenario!)  The heroine and the two kids she is watching are menaced by a very bad guy, and her sister is in big trouble down in Panama (more fun research).  Ask me about traveling to Cuba.  Ask me about Panama banking.  Ask me about the Florida current and Hemingway Marina.  I have learned a lot just sitting here with my butt in the chair and  Googling away.  Google some, write some, send out a few more queries.  This is a weird and probably a stupid way to spend one's life.