Last week I received some good news - an agency, having read my full manuscript, is interested in it. It will require more agency-assisted editing, but that too is good news; they like the novel enough to invest time in helping me make it better. And it’s a big name agency too! I’m like a jitterbug anticipating their suggestions. I took the novel as far as I could under my own steam, and while I know it’s good, at times I wondered just what it was that I had created — that can happen when you get so close to a project. Already, I have an insider’s perspective on its market genre. Wonderful.

It’s invigorating to — finally — have enthusiasm for my novel shared by someone in the business. A glimmer of hope in an morass of economic woes.

The hurdles are yet legion: pending the edits, it still has to become a formal offer of representation; the agent needs to entice a commissioning editor in a publishing house; an editor has to sell it to a pitch panel. In this business, I know only too well from my own experience that one can fall at any of the hurdles. But most are largely out of my control. The only thing I can control now is the quality of the novel, to make it the most irresistible prospect I can, and with the help of an agency, I can do even more about that.

But that is all next year’s concern.

Best of all in this is my internal victory, and the satisfaction it spawns. I have been vindicated. I took the decision to re-write a new draft, rather than start a different novel. I felt passionate about the subject matter and that I could tell the tale in a way that would sell. I believed it important also to learn to whip an errant novel into shape - it is a skill I would need as a writer. I have pulled apart and re-assembled an improved novel that made it over the next hurdle. Having done that, I feel confident that I can handle any edits that now come my way.

“Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

Today I got the first rejection letter to show the economic recession card. If agents and publishers are more focussed on keeping their current writers’ business in this economic environment, then they’re less likely to punt on new writers. So they say. In truth, new writers are essential to the publishing business, to drive new sales. They will always stump up for what they feel is the right proposition.

What really worries me about it, is that this recession has changed tastes. Who would even believe an international espionage thriller in a world where airlines are going out of business, and the villian people fear most is the faceless one stealing away your job? I can only hope the dish I serve suits people’s taste for escapism in this climate.

I persevere. We all persevere.

The podcast over on Litopia is a great source of interesting little tidbits that can educate any aspiring writer about the world of publishing. One of those little facts I learned from Peter Cox is that Friday is a “reading day” in the publishing industry, when agents catch up on submissions and slush pile material gets considered. The unfortunate consequence of that, I’m sure, is that rejection notices get sent out on Mondays. And if your submission happens to be via e-mail? Well - this Monday morning e-mail rejections were sitting in my Inbox when I started work .

At least I know why the week began on such a downer, but there is cold comfort in the knowledge.
Why can’t agents follow-up “reading Friday” on a “rejection Tuesday”?

So the rejection came back this morning. They certainly move fast in that agency; it seems my tardiness on this occasion didn’t sit well with that admirable ethic after all.

To be frank, I didn’t expect a request for a full. You just get so used to rejection slips (not that I’ve had that many) that, for the sake of your mental well-being, you discount the possibility of an agent actually liking the submission. That thinking caught me out this time.

Ah well, lesson learned!

So while I consider what do with Broken Evolution now, whether and which agents to try, it’s time to start planning the next novel.

Did you know that worldwide the money made by cyber-criminals outstrips the money made by the illegal drugs trade? I smell a novel in that little fact. Time for my new character, Ania, to get busy and meet an old character.

Life goes on.

The re-write and edit of my novel Broken Evolution is over, and has been sent to an agent who requested it. I hope the improvements will work in my favour, and the five week delay in getting to the agent won’t be held against me!

An interesting little irony - on the week that I finished Broken Evolution, the geneticist Steve Jones gave a lecture, saying that human evolution is over. Am I tapping a vein in the zeitgeist here? I suppose the premise of my book is that, while natural selection might be over, we might be embarking on a lateral step in human evolution instead. The theme came through nicely in the re-write, this time via the plot - where all themes should.

There was also the minor matter of a global economic meltdown during the week.

Evolution is over. Capitalism is dead.

Maybe Douglas Adams was right; it was a bad idea coming down from the trees in the first place. Time to go back up.

I’ll fetch my hammock …