In a Corner

After my puzzling response from Mills and Boon, I tried emailing and calling them, but received no answers. At first, I was discouraged, thinking I had gotten lost in some netherworld between the slush pile and the submissions which held interest. My melancholy was somewhat fueled by a bout of bronchitis (I am still coughing two weeks later you guys!) but in a couple of days I pushed past that. I then decided that perhaps because Harlequin and Mills and Boon are two different companies, though they are owned by the same people, perhaps Mills and Boon was prohibited from soliciting work that had not been sent directly to them. 

            With this hope/delusion/dream in place, I decided to resubmit to Mills and Boon. This time I sent the required query and synopsis, but also included a cover letter explaining what had happened, the envelope in which they sent me their submission guidelines hoping that someone would recognize the hand-writing, and the full manuscript. I know it is presumptuous to send a whole manuscript, but I decided to act confident and imply that they had asked for it. Besides, mailing anything over-seas is time-consuming and I did not want to fritter away my opportunity. 

            So, that’s that. Mills and Boon can take up to six months to respond to submissions, so I expect it to be quite a while before I hear anything. 

            Sigh… waiting is no fun. 

            In the meantime, I’ve pushed myself into a corner. I had about sixty page of the sequel to the novel I submitted written. The second novel was originally going to be much more action/adventure oriented, but if Mills and Boon picks it up, that obviously won’t work, especially as I was planning a few particularly brutal action scenes. Now, I don’t know what to do. Obviously, if they don’t pick up the first book I will want to stick with my original plan and self-publish.  

            I need to work on the second book, but I don’t know what direction to steer it right now. To complicate things further, I have a new idea I want to work with, but I know I need to focus. I guess I just need to write something. Even if it’s a haiku, you’ve got to keep yourself working. 

            I’ve been getting many questions about my Twitter account lately. I’ve passed up that magical 2,000 followers and people are getting suspicious of me. Rest assured my tweets are mine, save for the welcome to new followers and daily stats which are auto-generated. I want to show my gratitude to my new followers, but unfortunately it takes too much time to do that myself, so I have enlisted a tool to do it for me. Everything else is typed by my own fingers. I will post more about how I run my Twitter feed later. 

            Thanks to everyone for their interest and support!