The dreaded envelope arrived

The dreaded big envelope was waiting for me in my mailbox when I returned from doing a morning of errands. The small press publisher sent back my manuscript with the thanks but no thanks message. At least she wrote – in long hand – what she thought of the book, though she didn’t give me any suggestions for how to fix it. She admits that she wouldn’t know how to write it another way. She did say she thought the book doesn’t know whom it’s written for, and that it’s written a little too carefully. I’m not sure I know what either means.

So, if I am going to continue with this project I need to find an editor who can give me suggestions on how to fix these problems. 

But not right now. I need to let this rejection sink in for a bit. I really had some high hopes for this one because she sounded so optimistic after reading my query and other material. At least she said she liked the poems in the book. That gives me encouragement to submit them as a chapbook. I’m going to submit "The Emerging Goddess" poems as a separate chapbook as well.

And, I got a start this afternoon. I submitted five (I had to select 5 out of 30 - no easy task) of my April PAD poems to the PAD contest and five of my Paul poems to a site Marlene suggested, the Survivor’s Chronicle. Now that sounds right up my alley. 

I'm going to submit as much as I can in the next few days, and then forget about all that for a while. It’s time to regroup and rethink and reenergize. And, get to work on my novel.