Novels don't appear
instantly. They take time and effort and commitment. I spent a year
or more bashing my head against my word-processor, but the final
result read well, and I thought it had a fighting chance of
publication. I had written novels before, without any great success –
I had sent them to numerous agents, who had sometimes said that I had a good writing style, but that they didn't feel my previous efforts were
commercial enough. Sorrel in Scarlet I thought had
possibilities.
The first agent to
whom I sent it sat on it for months before curtly rejecting it. The
second wasn't taking on new clients at all. The third... I got a very
nice email, saying he had enjoyed the first three chapters, and
wanted to see the rest. Two weeks later, in March 2011, I had an
agent and a contract. Tim told me he thought Sorrel was
saleable.
We spent months
editing it, so Tim was confident in its chances. Then he sent it to a
dozen major UK publishers.
Three, including one
of the biggest, showed interest – I met with a commissioning
editor, who said he wanted to publish it.
And then Sorrel
crashed and burned. His acquisitions committee vetoed it – too
strange, too far outside the obvious niches. The other two interested
parties said the same.
I was left with an
unsaleable manuscript, and some broken dreams. Tim and I had both
been so sure Sorrel would fly.
Get back on the
horse that threw you. Impcatcher was the new novel I've set to
work upon.
But I still had a
manuscript in my clutches, one that had been within a whisker of a
commercial sale.
And so now I intend
to put Sorrel on sale myself.
I've got a long way
to go, but publication beckons.
No comments:
Post a Comment