I got a lovely call from my agent the other day. We had both assumed my first book was dead on arrival. Apparently, however, the book had been passed from some executive editor at Harper Collins to his assistant who read it and … loved it! The assistant had called my agent to tell her he was going to try to get approval from the board to publish the book as a trade paperback original. Crap!
Four times in this process I’ve been given tangible hope that something good was going to happen. My agent had a close friend who she thought would be very interested, a senior editor absolutely loved everything she’d read so far, an executive editor wanted a second read, a publisher really liked the book and was trying to decide if he wanted to bid. Each time, the result has been the same…I get really excited and hopeful such that I have trouble sleeping some nights and I check my email 4.2 billion times a day. I daydream constantly of what I’m going to tell my family, particularly those who’ve always disapproved of my reckless decision to be an author. I work on my marketing plan. And then…flomp…the great belly-flop into the concrete bottom of the empty pool that is rejection.
So…this time, I will do my best to not get too excited. I’ll focus my mind on things I have some control over, like my next book and my annoying job. I’ll check my email only 4.19 billion times a day. I’ll prepare for the fantastic Jeffrey Deaver seminar this weekend (and by the way, if you’re not planning to attend, but you can, you definitely should–it’s going to be great–see my previous blog entry for more info). Now, if only it wasn’t so hard to type with my fingers crossed…