Once Upon a Time...

I have been writing almost as long as I have been reading.

I have been reading a very long time.

Off the top of my head, eight books, numerous short stories, and a multitude of reports, essays, summaries, training manuals, all and sundry fascinating compositions.

About twenty years ago, I decided to try to sell my writing.  I even had an agent once, a little over ten years ago, from a well-established NYC agency, Folio Literary, but she quit the business after about a year and a half and that was that.

I tried the traditional route for a long time. I kept writing when I could, and submitting. Every book I submitted received full requests, but no offers. Except the last book.

On the last book, I received zero requests.

I took it as a sign.

If I want to publish my books, I'm going to have to do it myself.

I was never interested in self-publishing. It's a business, and I know enough people in business for themselves and see the amount of effort it takes to run one, effort not always equaling success. Plus, traditional publishers have a wealth of experienced and professional people that devote themselves to the non-writing aspects of creating a book. Now, I have to do all those one-thousand, seven-hundred, and twenty-two tasks myself. 

Time to get organized.

So, I have embarked on a journey that has an overwhelming amount of how-to information, and I will proceed as I always do, one step at a time. If you were catagorizing people between hares and tortoises, I am the tortoise. Slow and steady. Never mind winning the race, I just want to get to the finish line.

The first step is to actually write a manuscript. No problem there, I have a number to choose from, in additional to outlines for several more. The logical step might be to focus on the manuscript that snagged me an agent in the first place, but I am not going with logic here. Two reasons.

The first reason is that I have decided to turn that particular story into a three part series, the second of which I am writing now. The story in a nutshell involves librarians (you'll need to expand your conceptions of the profession considerably in the city of Anna Julia, Illinois) who save humanity. I personally believe that librarians do this every day, one person at a time, but I might be a bit biased on that point.

The second reason is that I really loved my last book. It's a bit more of a conventional story, titled Four Dogs and a Small Town, which, incredibly enough, tells the tale of four dogs in a small town and how they assist their various humans in the year 1965. In a small town. In Pennsylvania, although I never actually named the town. Use your imagination.

So, as my first step, was to find an editor. This blog is not a how-to manual, since at this point I don't know how-to, I am learning as I go along. I went to Reedsy.com, where I typed in a summary of my book, what I was looking to have done, submitted a form, and received quotes from several vetted editors. I picked one that felt right, and two days ago I received my edited copy. Now it's up to me to go through the manuscript and accept or reject (or consider) the changes.

I am working on that step now.

I'll let you know how it goes in my next post.