richard-rowland-perkins.com

Ah, the long awaited Dear Author letter. Or not so long awaited in this case.

First the good news: TOR fantasy responded to my submission of The Renegade’s Door two months ahead of schedule. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything until August, so imagine my surprise when I found the SASE from Tom Doherty Associates in my mailbox today. That was, however, the only good news.

Now for the bad news: Remember how you could tell whether your college application had been accepted or rejected, just by feeling by the thickness of the response envelope? This envelope was, sadly, thin.

I’m surprised only by the speed and efficiency of my rejection. (The phrase turboflush comes to mind…) TOR was always a longshot for me anyway.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any useful feedback in this rejection. I wasn’t really expecting any from such a large and busy publisher, but a guy can dream, right? I have little idea what specifically torpedoed the novel for them. Did the story outlined in my synopsis seem too cliche or predictable? Was it in a style or genre that’s backlogged or overbooked in their current catalog? Or was the writing in the first few sample chapters just so horribly unreadable that I should stop wasting their time and my own with the whole idea?

I’ll probably never know. But this is an experience that brings me one step closer to being a bone fide author. Every published author has been rejected many times. No matter how successful, most probably will be rejected again at some point in their career. I might as well get used to it now.

And I might as well submit the manuscript to another publisher or two (as well as an agent or three). This time, maybe I’ll find someone willing to pen a few constructive comments with their rejection.

And I suppose there was one other bit of good news: Someone from Tom Doherty Associates actually called me an author. I have it in writing!

Filed under: Journal