So I've got this manuscript, THE LONG ROAD INTO DARKNESS, that I completed in 2015. I sent out to St. Martin's Press, at their request, in the wake of SORROW LAKE's Hammett Prize nomination.
It sat for a year without a response. I finally discovered the acquiring editor who requested it had disappeared into the ether, so I began shopping it around to agents and editors. It sat for nine months in someone else's Inbox and then received the usual three-to-six months' wait for a rejection, when they bothered to respond.
In 2018 I put it through a vigorous rewrite and editing process and sent it out to Flame Tree Press, who acknowledged it with thanks and promised, as per their website, to reply with a judgment within two months. Seven months later I dared to query, and was told it was still under consideration.
Last Tuesday, Sept. 17, one year to the day after submitting it, I gave up and told them I was obtaining an ISBN for it and publishing it myself. I said a bunch of other stuff in the e-mail, but that's a story for another day.
The point of all this, and yes, there is a point, is that I'm putting it through another revision and editing process because, as many of you know, when a manuscript sits for that long, dates and ages and whatnot grow stale and need to be scaled up to the present. Next week it should be ready to put through the usual publication process.
Thing is, as I go through it once more I realize that this story represents some of the best writing I've ever done. It contains material I've wanted to get out there for a long time. I'm very proud of this thing, and if anyone had ever bothered to actually read it, I'm sure one of them would have made an offer on it.
You folks, the readers, will now be the judge of it. With mixed feelings, I'm giving up on any further attempt to work with a "traditional" publisher.
As I said in my e-mail to Flame Tree, appropriately named, authors are not commodities, like hog jowls or palm oil. We're thoughtful, hard-working people trying to communicate to the world through our work.
This is how it has to be done, I guess.
