On August 9, 2015, I decided to travel again to Isla Mujeres, partly because I love the place and partly to do research for a novel revision of SATS.
I repeated my excursion to Isla Contoy in order to study the island. To ensure that I made my scenes realistic in the novel. I went away, feeling that I had succeeded.
As with my previous novels, I sent SATS out to numerous publishing companies but it was turned down (one of my writing colleagues prefers this expression to rejected).
On August 20, 2016, I attended the Toronto Writing Workshop where an American writer gave the audience members pointers on how to get published. I’ve attended a long string of these workshops, my hope lurching when I think I can really take advantage of the advice the presenters give, only to be swept away in morass. Likewise with this one.
There were eleven agents from various companies and we had the opportunity to engage in a 10-minute meeting with any of them, pitching our book ideas. I chose two who I thought would be the best candidates to represent my children’s novel.
The first one seemed interested in my story and asked me to send her the ms. The other was more wary and said she wasn’t interested. One of the questions she asked me was truly puzzling: did I make my main character proactive or reactive? I can’t remember my response but I do remember thinking, Aren’t all characters reactive at some point?
I never heard back from the first agent but I did run into her at a book launch for a children’s author she represented. I reminded her of that meeting ten years previously and she asked me again what my book was about and asked again for me to send it to her.
Yeah, right.
My frustration manifested itself again. Lacking patience, I had SATS self-published with Baico Books in Ottawa. I thought it was a damned good book; couldn’t understand why publishing companies “turned it down.” But, alas, life is short.
As I did with my other books, I took copies of it on a trip to Mexico in July, 2018, and left one in my hotel.
My niece is an author who is traditionally published and she markets herself voraciously. I wondered if my lack of marketing was my downfall. So during one of the CANSCAIP (see my last blog) meetings, I chose another route. It was December 14, 2018, and the writers were invited to do a book spiel on their children’s books and then lay them out on the table in case anyone wished to buy them.
More of this in my next blog.
