This will be a short entry, but I wanted to let everyone know that, after more than a quarter century of work, my novel, The Forest Primeval, has been accepted for publication. Written Dreams Publishing, from Green Bay, Wisconsin, after an initial rejection, has agreed to publish the book. There remains a lot of rewriting and polishing to do before it is ready, and they have other projects in line before my book, which means that it will not be released until fall 2023. After several dozen rejections over the past decade, however, this is welcome and exciting news.
I’m still not sure how all of this will work, but here are some of the details as I understand them: The book will come out in hardcover, paperback, and e-book formats. It will be distributed through a third party company with links to libraries, Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Apple itunes, and independent bookstores such as Fox Den here in River Falls. I will probably have a book release party here in town (Fox Den?), and I’d like to figure out how to have others in Chicago and Nashville. I’ll keep you posted on all of this in the future.
Written Dreams is a much smaller operation than the big publishers in New York, but it is also much more personal. The owner of the company has been in contact with me repeatedly since I first submitted my work. That in itself is a huge step up from my frustrating experiences with literary agencies while attempting to get an agent to represent me. In trying to communicate with the New Yorkers, I often would not hear back from them for weeks or even months after I first reached out. When I did hear from them, it was usually just a standard rejection in an email without even referring to me by name. Many of those companies simply failed to respond at all. I have never been able to get an agent to show any interest, and New York publishers won’t talk to an author without going through an agent, so I had been stymied.
Then Kathleen recently showed me an article about a book being published by Written Dreams, and a friend also mentioned them in a happy hour conversation. I perused their web-site and found that they preferred to work directly with the author, rather than going through an agent. (Hooray!) I also discovered that they were looking for books with a local setting (half of my book is set in northern Wisconsin, the other half in Chicago). I was able to contact WD through their web-site, and they got back to me quickly, requesting the full manuscript. After reading it, they initially rejected it. I persisted, however, and asked what their objections were. I also assured them that I was willing to put in the work and do any rewriting that they suggested. That assurance seemed to do the trick and they decided to take a chance on me. An hour-long phone conversation with the owner of the company followed, and she sent me a contract.
Written Dreams is also putting together an anthology of stories by new authors writing about their experience in writing their first novels. They’ve asked me to submit a chapter for that book, although the deadline is only a month away. I’m guessing that my experience is probably a little out of the ordinary, so I decided to take a crack at it. I’ll keep you informed about that as well.
If there is a lesson to be learned from my experience, it is that persistence pays off. I first learned that lesson as a teenaged distance runner who was not very good. Running 1000 miles every summer turned me into a much better runner, and that talent took me to college. Similarly, I didn’t finish my Ph.D. until I was in my forties. In light of my past history, I guess getting my first novel published when I will be nearly 70 should not be surprising. Call me a late-bloomer.