Waiting on book jacket design

Editing is nearly done, just waiting on the book jacket design.

Another update

Things are going well.  The editor has the book in her hot little hands and the young gal is working hard on the book jacket.  Hopefully, ready to go sometime in the next three weeks, but we'll see.  In the meantime, I finished a story I call "The Baltimore Princess" and submitted it to the writers group I belong to and a couple of magazine contests.  I also began working on another short story that I started quite a while ago called "The Wallflower Reunion".  I'm about half done with that, so I haven't been twiddling my thumbs.

new short story

I started work today on a short story that features a young, expectant mother who lives in the inner city of Baltimore.  You might say, What the hell does this guy know about young, expectant mothers who live in the inner city?  Good question!  Not much would be my answer, but I don't think it will affect the story line very much.  I'm attacking it from a different angle and when I'm finished, which shouldn't take me more than a few days...I think, I'm going to try and sell it to a magazine.  We'll see, I guess.
My only other hint about story line is that it also involves the Duchess of Cambridge and it takes place this year.
If I can't sell it, I'll post it online.

update on "Brothers"

I'm continuing to rewrite parts of the book, hopefully making them better.  I shouldn't be so lazy about this, but I really haven't contacted any other publishers (we've been pretty busy this month with planning for my mother's 90th birthday bash, topped off by her sky jumping out of an airplane in Waseca.  It went great, and she loved it.  And I haven't heard anything from the one publisher who gave me some encouraging words, so...I think I'll just pursue the self-publishing mode for now and maybe shop that and "The Book Club Murders" to some other publishers in a couple of months.
In other news, the great, young lady working on the book jacket says she can make the ideas I gave her work on the cover, so I'm pretty excited about that.
If all goes well, the book should be finished editing and the jacket cover ready by the end of June, a couple of months later than I had thought, but, things get in the way sometimes.

In pursuit

The late afternoon sun was low in the western sky, barely hanging above the treetops.  Jack and Gabe paddled along at a far, less hectic pace than they had earlier in the afternoon, and a burgeoning chill was taking hold in the air.  Smoke drifted lazily from the eastern shore a half mile from the brothers.

Gabe corrected their course a little to the right.  “I’ll wager, we’ll find Kellan along with our two friends from the saloon waiting for us there, or at the least a note,” he said.  A slight hope resided in his mind that there might be a peaceful end to whatever this was that was happening to them.

“Gabe, I’m a little afraid,” Jack confessed.

“I am too, Jack.”  

Jack was surprised.  Whatever he knew of Gabe, he thought he would never admit to being frightened.  After all, Gabe had volunteered for three tours in Vietnam.  You don’t do that if you’re afraid, a little crazy maybe, but not afraid.

As the seventeen foot Jensen glided closer to the campsite, Jack could see a beached aluminum canoe and discerned movement away from the water.  Pulling within a hundred yards, he could see a large person standing by the logs rimming the fire grate.  Another body was roaming behind the first.  He could see the second body stop, bend over by a tree and then jerk a third person to his feet, Kellan.  

Editing and jacket cover plans

Although I am still involved in rewriting and probably will continue for awhile, I am almost ready to engage an editor to fix what needs fixing, and have talked to the lady who has great experience with book jackets.  I'm thinking of a silhouetted or darkened picture of three men with the Gabe character in the middle, wearing a wide brimmed hat, flanked by two other dudes.  My older brother will be in town in a couple of weeks so I'll stage a photo-op with him, myself and my sister's friend, Steve.  In front of that photo, which will basically be an outline of the three main characters, I'd like a transparent, almost ghostlike photo superimposed over the picture of the three older brothers of  them when they were young lads.  Again, faces obscured.

Still waiting to hear from the publisher.  A friend of mine told me that it generally takes two months for publishers to get back to you.  Two months will be up in about three weeks so, still hoping for a response.

I'll get going this weekend and send out another Query letter with synopsis, prologue, and first chapter to a publisher that Writer's Digest listed.

I think J.K. Rowling was rejected something like 27 times before her first Harry Potter novel was accepted for publication.  At that rate, I've got to send out a lot more Query letters with samples.

Better get moving!!

Publishing?

To publish or not to publish.   That is the question.
I contacted a publisher about a month ago-the first time I have ever done so.  All three of my previous novels have been self-published affairs, but I wanted to gauge the interest in the traditional publishing world, so I contacted a small publishing firm on the east coast.  They surprised me with an extremely prompt reply which was both favorable and unfavorable at the same time.

The publisher gave me some constructive criticism and told me if I was willing to rewrite part of the sample I had sent to him, that they would like to look at it again.  I thanked him sincerely and set about adding onto the prologue and changing the first chapter.  A week later I sent it to him and...haven't heard a thing since.  No acknowledgement of having received the resubmission and no response to my followup email three weeks later asking if he had had a chance to look at the longer sample I sent to him.

Now, I asked myself why I have received no word and, of course, several thoughts ran through my head: his team hated it, and couldn't be bothered with sending a response back to me, they just haven't had the chance to go through it, lost it, the publisher died, they were insulted by the way I sent it and haven't bothered to respond out of spite, or they're continuing to evaluate it.

I've considered the possibility that they're probably not interested and maybe just don't want to communicate anymore.   I think that may be rude or discourteous, but maybe they're just caught up in a busy time of the year and haven't had the time to respond.

Anyway, I've decided to send it out to at least a dozen more publishers and see if there may be some interest somewhere.  Maybe I will practice what Grant Blackwood called "irrational optimism" when seeking traditional publication.

If you never try, you never succeed.