Happy Rejection

I'm not worried about Echoes in the Wind's marketability anymore. I got an email the other week from a publisher requesting a full copy of the manuscript. I was thrilled. I hadn't heard a word from them in over a month and had assumed that it was a rejection in the form of a no response. I thought it was my query letter. Instead of sending one with a short paragraph describing the book, I did something different and wrote one line describing the book and I attached a blurb and a synopsis. I was so happy when I got the request for a full. I had spent weeks agonizing over Echoes, wondering if it was marketable, and then out of the blue comes a publisher who I had written off wanting to see more. A publisher WHO DID NOT CARE that I had made Echo black, or that the ending was sad, or any of the other changes I made to the myth.

I got a rejection today, but I don't care. I'm happy. I have my confidence back. I just spent a good hour researching more publishers and I have already sent Echoes off to another one. If Echoes cannot find a publisher before I finish Deep Embrace, I will go through and edit it again, before sending it back out into traffic.

I've also decided to try and write a novel after Deep Embrace. If I can get it over 50,000 I'll be happy. I've learnt alot about writing over the past three years. I feel like I'm ready to go back to novels and write one that will not go rambling on for hundreds of pages like Atlantis Reborn and the Secret World did.

Happy endings and sex scenes...are these needed?

I finished a novella earlier this year called "Echoes in the Wind" that had a sad ending and romantic elements but no actual sex scene. I started marketing it in July and noticed something interesting. Alot of web sites state in their submission guidelines that "happy endings" are a MUST and stories must also include sex scenes that are important to the plot and hot, hot, hot.

I asked myself..."Do books need sex scenes and happy endings to be marketable?" I can think of heaps of popular stories that don't include sex scenes or happy endings and are quite successful. At the same time though I think my chances of success would probably increase if I DID include happy endings and sex scenes.

Romance is the most successful and popular genre in the world and let's face it most readers want a happy ending when they read a book. This irritates me because if I had slapped a happy ending onto the end of "Echoes in the Wind" I would've ended up pissing off alot of Greek God fans for changing the story of Narcissus and Echo. I decided to go with the original version with Echo disappearing into the wind and becoming an echoing voice.

I was pretty annoyed when I first realised the ending might make Echoes unmarketable. I can't change it because it would ruin the whole point of the novella. It's called ECHOES IN THE WIND because she fades away and leaves Narcissus heartbroken! I don't know if Echoes will get published. It's annoying that I spent so long working on something that I only realised when I was done was probably unmarketable. It wasn't a waste of time though. Writing it helped me grow as a writer but at the same time I wish, wish, wish it was more marketable!!

I've been thinking about adding a sex scene to Deep Embrace. I'm a bit nervous about writing one cause I've never done it before. I'm embarrassed it will be really dumb!! LOL I'll have a crack at it though. Why am I adding one? Because if I want to market it as a romance publishers and most readers would expect one. So I'm going to experiment with one. If it doesn't work I'll rip it out but to be honest I like the idea of including one because I really do think it will help me market it.

What a year!!

I can't believe I haven't updated this blog in so long. It's been a busy year for me. My job contrac fizzled out so I got flung into unemployment limbo for a few stressful weeks, crawled out of that hole and into another job, I finished writing Echoes in the Wind and had the joy of it being rejected by a few publishers and I am halfway through a rewrite of my 2008 fantasy short story Deep Embrace. I am loving the rewrite of Deep Embrace. I've fleshed the story out to a novella and I'm having so much fun writing about mermaids. I'm channelling my childhood love for the Little Mermaid into Perse who is a butt kicking Oceanid Sea Goddess determined to rescue her fella from the God and Goddess of Darkness.

I've got plans to do some more editing on Echoes. I'm not totally convinced it will get published. It's in this terrible limbo area. It's too big to be a short story, barely big enough to be an e-book but too short to be a novel so that leaves me not alot of options. I think it's highly possible the story will just rot on my hard drive which is a little sad to me but at the same time I'm just glad I finished it. I had such a busy, stressful, weird year when I was writing it. The fact that I finished it at all is awesome to me.

Now what has next year got in store? I have decided to go back to writing novels. I am going to compress what was going to be a 7 book series into a one book series. I was going to write my own version of the Orpheus Greek myth but I have not made up my mind if it will be worth it or not. It will have a sad ending and my experiences with Echoes have got me wondering...are sad endings unmarketable? Do readers always want a happy ending?