April 27, 2005
A good five or six months ago I got aggressive with a slightly older manuscript of a mystery/thriller I wrote (and still liked) and a publisher wanted to see it, although they warned it would take 6 months or more to read it. Shortly after sending it off, I got another e-mail from another publisher asking to read it. By this time I was being represented by Irene, so I asked her about it. She had worked with the second publisher and recommended I send it. So I told them what was going on and they said, "no, don't send it, we don't want to compete." Trudge right into publishing purgatory.

Well, if you've been following all the previous blogs you know I moved on to other projects. The first publisher hasn't rejected me, but at the same time I had decided that I would probably turn down any possible offer because of distribution problems and significantly overpriced books. (It's a luxury, but you can't negotiate if you can't walk away. That doesn't mean it's easy). Anyway, I received an e-mail today from the second publisher saying, "send it as an e-mail." So I did. All this interest in such a short span of time. Hopefully something will come of it all.

As for the rest of the day, I've sent out some queries, worked on The Journal, worked a bit on the novel. It doesn't seem all that productive, but maybe it's been better than I thought.

Best,
Mark Terry