December 21, 2005
As I write this, as you know, I have a reasonable guarantee of two more books actually seeing print. The Devil's Pitchfork and The Serpent's Kiss. They're contracted for, written, the publisher paid me an advance, I cashed the check and we're well into cover art and discussion of editing and I've been rounding up blurbers.

They will be #2 and #3 of books I have written published by someone else. The first book published, Catfish Guru, was via iUniverse, and I tend to marginalize it, though I think the stories stand up. #1 was Dirty Deeds.

My agent is shopping a follow-up to Dirty Deeds.

The follow-up to The Serpent's Kiss is written in draft form. I'm reasonably certain it will see the light of publication sometime in the future. Unless...

Unless the first 2 don't do well. Unless Midnight Ink itself isn't successful enough to warrant their continuing to publish fiction under this imprint. Unless...

I've had publishing contracts croak on me twice before.

So although I'm 99% certain The Devil's Pitchfork and The Serpent's Kiss will be published and do well, there is a tiny seed of uncertainty that I can't quite get past.

And I suspect most writers don't believe their book will actually be out until they hold it in their hands.

I also suspect that this may never really go away, at least not if you've had a long history of rejection, like most writers do. I found myself wondering that the other day. With one novel published, two more contracted for, when exactly do you feel confident that, to paraphrase Kinsella and Kevin Costner--If you write it, publishing will come? For a lot of us, we start out thinking if we write it it'll get published, then soon realize that if we write it it probably won't. Then you start getting your books published and you still have to wonder, If I write it, will it get published?

I wonder. Does Stephen King feel confident that his next book will be published? Probably. PJ Parrish? I wonder. Vince Flynn? John Sandford?

Big authors have lost contracts from time to time. Writing careers do fade, for one thing or another.

And once we're out of that rarefied atmosphere of bestsellers, the so-called midlist author stands on thin ice indeed.

As I'm working on this pseudonymous work, there's a little whisper in the back of my head--"you're wasting your time; it'll never get published; you're throwing good time after bad; concentrate on the Derek Stillwater novels, at least they're a bird in the hand; concentrate on your nonfiction business, which is going so well, strike while the iron is hot and all those cliches..."

All aspiring writers are delusional. Somewhere in their heads they know, just know, that they're better than all those other writers, that it'll be their book that breaks out of the increasingly large crowd, that they will be bestsellers, go on Oprah, have hit movies made out of their books.

I don't think reasonably established writers get out from under that same umbrella of delusion. Perhaps it's a necessary component of doing this. Writing a novel is a long, often tedious process. It takes probably 100 to 200 hours at a minimum, maybe even 500 or 1000 or more. It's almost impossible to judge its quality, let alone its commercial potential. It's probably a worse risk than someone who invents a new widget and thinks it will take over the world, or, god forbid, someone who wants to try and open a new restaurant or boutique.

It's a confidence game. We play it with ourselves and we play it with the world.

Best,
Mark