Turn the Page

Prepare to be disappointed.  In your writing workshop, when you read that chapter you slaved over and your listeners find it glib or boring or confusing – anything but terrific, which was your judgment.  In the hunt for an agent or a publisher, when that novel you workshopped and rewrote to perfection is turned down again and again and again and again.  In the marketplace, when the novel you created with such care, love and hope sinks without a trace.  That’s what happened to my third novel, Blood Feud.  I’d sold around 65,000 copies of my first novel and about 86,000 of my second – a good trajectory, I thought.  The first was historical and the second contemporary.  I stuck with contemporary for Blood Feud but added the element of crime – the main character was a woman state police detective and the other major woman character was a Mafia princess. Complex and interesting plot  including secrets, murder, love, betrayal, etc, and a soon-to-be-hot location – Providence, RI.  Alas, 6500 copies later, the book vanished – unreviewed, unseen and thus unloved.  I just checked four used book websites – you can buy one of about a dozen copies today through AbeBooks or Alibris at prices ranging from $1.00 to $18.83(!?!).  When it happens to you, my advice is:  Turn The Page.  Unless you wanna get stuck, it’s better to just move on.

Copyright 2008 © by Beth Quinn Barnard of text and photos.  All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.