Across the River...with a very short paddle

Has it only been two years since I last blogged? A lot, or very little, has happened since then. I had a great time at the 2006 Sleuthfest, the panel I was on went well and I had a meeting with an editor at Harper Collins who enthusiastically asked to see my manuscript. As luck would have it, my agent was also a speaker there and was able to talk with her as well. Sounds great, right?

Well, not so great. The editor felt my book was too "cozy-like" for HC and my agent has since faded from view. You'd think after all this time in publishing I'd have developed a thick skin against rejection, but maybe it's better that I haven't. One of the things that drew me to my former agent was his assessment that my novel was "humane." The characters aren't black or white; the good guys have flaws and the bad guys have soft spots. My soft spots are turning into flaws.

The agent felt there was nowhere else to offer the book, and so communication ceased. Ouch! Funny, when I was first looking for agents, I sent my query to the usual suspects, but also jumped at anyone whose last name ended in a vowel. I figured they'd understand the Italian American stuff. Then it winds up that the agent who really "got it" was not a extra from The Sopranos, but someone with a name right out of Masterpiece Theater.

Luckily, right after that disappointment, I got a well-paying gig writing Web site content for a major woman's magazine, so I didn't have much time to brood or blog. Unluckily, eight months later, the editor who hired me was let go. With 2006 on its way out, I gave my manuscript one last shot. I sent it in to the Deadly Ink unpublished novel contest.