Sometimes everything goes wrong. That, of course, is something that happens more often than the times when everything goes right. Lately I have had the fortune to experience the more common of those two sometimes.
My most recent publisher, the one that was supposed to publish Snow Babies, underwent a reduction in capacity and financial difficulties. They had to reorganize and reduce their commitments. That meant they could no longer publish any of my other novels. It apparently also means that they will no longer fulfill the publishing contract on Snow Babies. Bummer.
My new car, a Ford Fiesta that I bought from Enterprise Rental Car to replace my old Ford Fiesta that was unceremoniously killed by a passing motorist as it sat in front of my house, is now in the shop with it’s own hoof and mouth disease. While picking up kids from school, I hit a pothole on a Dallas street. Not just any pothole, but a huge camouflaged cavern of a pothole capable of taking a huge bite out of the right front wheel. I was not speeding. I did not do anything wrong but drive in place I have driven a hundred times previously… though this time it was after torrential rain and a bit of nasty hail that I had no way of knowing made potholes bigger and angrier and more horrible. I am surprised that it didn’t eat any other cars in the moderate traffic I was surrounded by. But I initially thought that once a passing motorist, younger and more pothole savvy than me, did the good Samaritan act of helping me change the tire, that I would only have to get the tire fixed or replaced and would be happily on my way again. No such luck. Not only was the tire ruined, but also the rim it was mounted on, and possibly the undercarriage of the car. It was going to cost at least the $500 deductible from my insurance company, unless something even worse happened that they couldn’t see without looking at their bank books a little harder. And I had to get another rental car in the mean time. But, of course, the recent hail storm not only had most of the rental cars rented, but the rental companies had lost cars to hail damage as well. I was stuck with a rather expensive Dodge Challenger that the car insurance can’t completely pay for. And I have no place to park it if the hail decides to revisit us this week. Double bummer.
And, of course, it doesn’t end there. Having kids in school is a challenge, especially this time of year with high-stakes testing going on. I can’t give you particulars because some things have to remain private, but even really bright kids like mine, the children of two teachers, can be subject to test-anxiety and failure and the resulting depression which can prove fatal if not taken seriously enough. Triple damn ding-dang bummer!
But we can’t let bad luck be the end-all of the story. I am a pessimist by nature. Nothing has happened to me recently that took me by surprise. I am always expecting the worst to happen, and life rarely disappoints me on that score. So I am not floored by these randomly-occurring sucker punches. Rather, I am given that shot of anger and adrenaline needed to pick myself up and start fighting back.
I have my novel Magical Miss Morgan almost ready to submit to another publisher that I found through a friend, with a couple of backup publishers to send it to after it is rejected the first time. I have researched three possibilities so far.
I talked to the insurance agent today to stop the hemorrhaging of money down the drain of car repairs, and though I have taken a pretty good-sized cannon shot in this battle, it will not sink my little pirate ship.
And a conference with principal and teacher and student and parent solved a lot of the other problem. It can be an advantage to a kid to have a teacher as a parent. We tend to know how everything works, and we speak the secret language of Edjumacation to help get things actually done.
So, no worries, man. Even though all my luck is bad luck, I am still lucky… since there is a lot of it.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Moaning Writer
I am not Charles Dickens. I wish I were. I want to be a writer of wry humor, social commentary, and have an effect on the soul of the world I live in. The way he was. Heck, Dickens invented Christmas the way we do it now (with considerable help from department stores like Macy’s) by writing A Christmas Carol. But the chances for that are growing ever dimmer.
The small publisher with which I was associated, and who gave me a contract to publish Snow Babies, has died. The business folded while my novel was still in the editorial phase. PDMI Publishing was a worthy group of writers and entrepreneurs who in a different time might’ve gone far. I know by reading some of their works that they had talent. But between the ferocious grip of the mega publishers and the waves upon waves of self-published stuff on Amazon, real writers with talent are drowning in a sea of mediocrity and media indifference. Writers who succeed are the ones with the most luck or the most direct connections to the gate keepers. Profit is far more important than literary merit. You don’t really have to have talent any more. You don’t have to know what a split infinitive is or how to compose a compound sentence properly or how to spell. Shoot, you barely have to know how to write. Just write about sparkly teenage vampires falling in love with high school girls or sexual perverts who are into torture devices, and you can be a millionaire… if you can somehow luck out over the millions of wannabes writing the same exact crap.
There was a time when writing teachers and published authors were telling me that sooner or later good writing gets published. It was supposed to be inevitable. But that was a different time than now. Different rules for the game. I will have two published books with two different publishers. I-Universe published Catch a Falling Star. And Page Publishing will publish Magical Miss Morgan. But I paid both of those publishers to turn my books into published paper books with ISBN numbers and access to customers of Barnes and Noble and other outlets. But I don’t expect to earn the money back that I invested. Not while I’m still alive at least.
My I-Universe publishing experience was worth it. I spent a lot of money to get Catch a Falling Star published, but I got to work with real editors and advisers who had experience working for Knopf and Random House. They gave me a real evaluation of my work and taught me how the business of promoting the book was supposed to work. And the help that they gave me ended there. No advertising budget beyond what I could afford myself. I learned a lot for my money. But I had to come to terms with the fact that marketing was going to take more time and effort than I was physically capable of doing. I have six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor after all.
Page Publishing was a mistake. They were cheaper than I-Universe, but I am not getting anywhere near the value for my money. Instead of real editors reading and suggesting and modifying my work, I get nit-picky grammar Nazis who don’t even know as much about grammar as I do. They are only copy editing. And the last rewrite was me spending time changing all the incorrect changes they made back to the original text. They did not even tell me the name of the editor making the changes. I talked to the I-Universe editors over the phone and discussed changes in detail. Page gives me email copies to read over and fume about silently. They are no better than the vanity presses of old who were really no more than a re-typing and printing service.
So, from here on, I will only do the self-publishing options available through Amazon. I have no more money or energy to spend on the black hole of literary dreams.
I can’t help but be a writer, though. That part is genetic. I will continue to write and tell stories that I need to tell. I can’t help it. Not to do so will cause me to shrivel and die almost instantly. And I am only exaggerating just a little bit. Well, maybe a lot. But it is still true.
Whatever promises the future holds, I am not depending on them for my feelings of success, closure, and self-worth. The world as I have come to know it will always be a ridiculous stew-pot of ideas and ego and cow poop, and I am not so much giving up as stepping out of the stew. I wish to tell stories for the story’s sake. I have no delusions of becoming as wealthy as Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. I will never be Charles Dickens. And I am okay with that.
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Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, insight, publishing, self pity, the road ahead, work in progress, writing
Tagged as being a writer, Catch a Falling Star, complaints about publishers, I-Universe, Magical Miss Morgan, Page Publishing, PDMI Publishing, publishing