TFP Update

So, unsurprisingly TFP will no longer be publishing 'Naomi and the Devil of Darkling Green'. How do I feel? Disappointed, naturally but this book and its characters has been living in some form since I completed the first draft way back in 2003 and it will live on. Some time later in the year, if nothing happens in the meantime, I will start touting it again. You have to have thick skin in the writing game. I've been getting rejections, for short stories, novels, poems and the rest since I started and I've been rejected by publishers, agents, magazines and websites. How many rejections? Hundreds. Easily.

This one is a little harder to take because the book had a home for a while and started to become something. Now it's got to wait again. I really do think that if a publisher were to back it correctly it has the potential to be very big indeed, not just as a novel but also as a film, collectable, interactive adventure, computer game, you name it...but then I would say that, I'm the author!

I've followed the discussions on the various blogs and I've tried to look at things with an objective eye. What I've seen, I think, are a lot of disappointed people venting their frustrations. I know nothing about these people so can hardly comment though I do wonder if some are experiencing what really amounts to a form of rejection in the publishing world for the first time. I just don't know. Of course there are other issues. I feel for those that are owed money, especially those that are owed substantial sums. I'm owed a little too and to say I could do with it is an understatement. How those that were almost at debut publication stage (one author's book was due to be published tomorrow and I have no idea if that went ahead, if he was one of the chosen few, though blog silence and gut feeling tell me he probably wasn't) must be feeling I can't imagine. My heart goes out to them. For many writers, getting a book published is so much more than a business transaction. It's often a life-long dream come true...

What I do know is that I have to get on, with other projects, with writing. I said it a couple of days ago, that I'm lucky to have these other projects in the pipeline. I need to make them as good as they can possibly be and then work as hard as I can to publicise and market them, then I have to get on with more projects, more and more and more...