In an effort to be as transparent as I can, I thought I’d go over the cover design. The cover of your book is almost as important as the book itself. People will often see it before they ever hear you talk about it. As an artist, I have witnessed someone using my work without permission. I have no problem if they use my work for inspiration – all artists do it. I have no problem if they don’t give me credit for the inspiration, but I do have a problem if they use my work and copy it and try to pass it off as their own. I thought I’d take this time to post the inspiration behind the cover and the images I use.

While I waited patiently for my book to be ripped apart and destroyed by proofreaders and the copyeditor, I began to seriously think about the cover art. Years ago, I would patiently slave over the composition, color, and entire emotional involvement of a book cover. That time had passed, and the digital world had now consumed the world of cover design.

I wanted to go back to my roots and capture the emotion again on a cover. I wanted to hand paint it. But how? What would I paint? The climax of the book is when the two males rekindle that one night with the past love. Do I put two men on the cover with two women? Do I make a single image and have people use their imagination? I digitally designed this image here as a stand in while I filled my sketchbooks up with ideas. None worked.

However it happened, I don’t remember, but I do recall coming across this image below in google images. Not the title mind you, but the image of the woman looking out at the buildings. I could use it as a point of reference. I stay just outside of Richmond, VA. Finding the right image of Richmond as a backdrop would replace the buildings in the back, and a silhouette of a man and woman would be painted inside a room. Again, this was used as a stand in, and replaced the above image.

The image below is the photo of Richmond that I used. No, I didn’t infringe on the copyright of the photographer, as I altered a great deal of the image – from moving some of the buildings around, to adding in lights, making some buildings taller and others shorter. Finally, I would make the book cover monotone as in the above image.

I painted the cover in oil, and will post them over the next few days.

My grammar is god awful. Serious. I can describe the shit out of something, but other than putting in a comma or period, many of the other punctuation marks -, :, ;, regardless of how many times they’ve been explained to me, tend to remain unused on my keyboard.

That being said, I was told early on, “don’t sleep on the editing. So I didn’t. I have a dear friend who proofread it for me, but she, and my English professor told me to get a copy editor. The hell is a copyeditor, and is it spelled copyeditor or copy editor? I guess I can google that. I had no idea what a copyeditor was. I just thought books were edited for grammar and content and that was it. Not so. A copyeditor is when an editor improves the formatting, style, and accuracy of text. Unlike general editing, copy editing might not involve changing the content of the text.

I began to research copyeditors and got a myriad of responses, some charging $75 an hour, while others charged $0.02 per word, and so on and so forth. I also found out that anybody can be a copyeditor and there’s no licensing school to go through. You can just start a website, do some free work, (or not) to get your name out there, and then, boom!! you’re a copyeditor. I also found out some companies have multiple people editing your book – one for this chapter, one for that chapter, and so on and so forth. Fuck that. I wanted one person to edit this motherfucker. Createspace has a copyediting service for .016 per word, or $160 for every 10,000 words. That’s actually not a bad deal. I would need just under $1,600 for the copyeditor to do his/her magic on my book.

I finally came across a lady who, now that I look back, was probably a mistake to go with. She seemed very nice and had a resume that consisted of some 20-30 books. Her responses to me were somewhat short, but she was very professional. It wasn’t her usual genre of books, which should’ve been my first red flag. Multiple websites said to make sure the copyeditor edits your genre and is a fan of it.

Upon completion of editing the book, the copyeditor sent this in the email:

Hey, John! I’ve attached the manuscript with tracked changes. If there are any questions, let me know. Please note that, ultimately, this is your book, so you must accept or reject as you feel fits your vision.

This is in the contract, but I just wanted to mention again as I do with all my new authors — I highly recommend getting someone to proofread after copy edits as copy edits are often more extensive than authors think they will be and errors can slip through. For example, there are some places where the manuscript head-hops — jumps between character perspectives within the same scene and sometimes within the same paragraph — that I recommend being rewritten to come from just Lawrence’s POV or just Jeff’s. Given the structure you’ve set up of these two men reflecting on their past loves, all the events really should be filtered through their perspectives. Again, my recommendation. My word is not law. You guys gotta do you. 🙂

As a reader, a writer, and an editor, it’d be remiss of me not to give you a heads up about some potentially problematic content in the novel. I’m not familiar with your co-author, but you personally might get some blowback as a white author using the n-word. I’m not saying you will or that every reader will have a problem with it, but it’s a possibility. Also, the female characters were a little troubling in my opinion. For example, Kayleigh and Carla were both given rape storylines, but it didn’t seem to serve a real purpose except to make Jeff and Lawrence look even more chivalrous and neither were treated with any real gravity. Kayleigh suffered months of physical and sexual abuse, and Carla conceived a child out of rape. Both of these situations would have substantial impacts on their mental and emotional health. As it currently stands and given how outspoken I am on the treatment of female characters in media, I’d have to ask not to be included in any thanks or acknowledgements.

I’m sorry to come down hard, but I’m pretty familiar with the romance audience and I felt it would be better for you to hear some of this now than for readers to dump it on you in reviews. Like I said before, this is your book and your path. Take what you will from the above.

After reading her response, I was left somewhat confused by what I felt was a contradiction. On one hand, she tells me that the characters “head-hop” and that the book should be filtered through their perspectives. On the other hand, she talks about the mental and emotional health of the two female characters.

The “rape” storylines – although touchy – are minor parts to the book, and less than 10% of the book is dedicated to that. The story is about the memories that both Jeff and Lawrence have about Carla and Kayleigh and their desire to have one more night with them. If I am remembering my time with someone from my past, there’s no way I can remember anything about their life after we’ve lost contact. And there’s no way Jeff or Lawrence can know if Carla and Kayleigh ever got professional help or are emotionally stable. I truly believe the copyeditor was more focused on strong female roles, than the point of the entire story. If through that entire book of close to 100,000 words, she’s more concerned about the mental and emotional health of the females, then yes, she missed a badass story.

Women often want to know how men feel and think, and this book does this well. It takes two men from different walks of life, both missing that one woman who touched their heart in a way nobody ever has or ever will. Every man I know has that one woman that fucked them over in life, messed them up emotionally, and even if they no longer want to see them, they still think about them from time to time. If we don’t tell you it’s because we don’t want to hear the backlash because of something we can’t help – our thoughts.

Women fuck good men over, and those men turn and fuck good women over. It’s a vicious cycle.

This book is their story, and it’s a shame I wasn’t able to convey that to her. If as an author, the audience doesn’t understand your message, it’s not their fault, it’s yours.

Speaking of copyeditors, I took the time to look it up. According to copyediting.com, “If you want to see a group of copyeditors go toe to toe, ask them whether copyedit is one word or two. Chances are you’ll get two very strong opinions, neither side allowing that the other might have a reasonable argument.”

Sometimes I guess even the professionals can’t even agree on their own profession …

I don’t want to get too far off track with the issues that I came across while looking to publish this novel. I think sometimes I tend to complain a bit much, and that’s not the direction I intend to go with this. As a pessimist, I often see the negative well before I see the positive. It’s something I’ve wrestled with all my life and I’ve come to accept it’s how I am. This post may be a ‘Debbie Downer’ but I can assure you, the reader, that’s not the intention.

As I began to post updates about my novel and the process on Facebook, I was somewhat surprised at the amount of doubters I came across. I can accept that there are scam artists out there who use gofundme and kickstarter to swindle people out of their hard-earned money, and there’s no way you can know one from the other most of the time. I can also accept that not everyone is going to believe in your dream regardless of how much you do; it’s a part of life.

Most of the feedback from people was positive: “good for you man” or “hey, I can’t donate, but I can post it on my Facebook” so I want to give credit where credit is due. There was a LOT of responses similar to that. What I did find interesting were people who said things like, “I can’t support this because it sounds like a book by Eric Jerome Dickey.” Mind you, I’ve never read anything written by Eric Jerome Dickey, and even if I had, often, many romance books are very similar – the guy wants the girl or vice versa. My favorite rejection came from five different people with the same rejection, “you didn’t wish me Happy Birthday, but you want me to support your book?”

Really?

I don’t get birthday notifications on Facebook, and I’m on Facebook maybe less than an hour a day. If I don’t go to a person’s page, I have no way of knowing it’s their birthday.

Anyway, why did I write this post? I wrote it to anyone who is planning on writing a novel and wants to get it published. You’re an author, you need the funds to get it published, and very few believe in your dream, or … or … they believe in it from afar. You will get rejected by not only publishers, but by those in your life. If you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it. There’s no other way of putting it. In the end, you’ll find that those who support it either through financial means, word of mouth, or even a simple, “go for it, I believe in you,” are almost as exhilarating as the accomplishment itself.

I’ll continue talking about the design of the book cover later on, but I’m trying to go in order of how events transpired. At heart, I’m an artist, and 90% of the time, my mind is running in multiple directions. Imagine you’re at a computer and you have 50 tabs open. It’s your job to keep up with what’s important but you’re too stubborn to write it down. That’s me. In my mind, as I work through the day, I have multiple projects I have to work on and complete. Instead of writing down everything, I say to myself, “I got this.” Of course, I rarely “got this.”

Over the years I’ve gotten better. I do write out what I need to do, but from time to time, I’ll stray from it. Why? Cause “I got this.” Part of it is being stubborn, and part being undisciplined.

After reading up on all of the self publishing companies and comparing them, originally I went with Lulu. It was through multiple friends contacting me on Facebook who encouraged me to look into Createspace, that caused me to eventually change my decision. I read up on Createspace, took a hard look at them, and eventually caved. The fact that they allowed you to pay as you go helped in my decision-making process.

There was something that bothered me though about the book publishing industry as a whole. On the back of every book is an ISBN. This code acts as your book’s social security number. Before I go further, the cost for a government SSN (your identifier,) is free. Just keep that in the back of your mind momentarily. The ISBN is a multiple digit number that identifies your book – which edition it is, the publisher, and all the info tied into it. Granted, you don’t have to have an ISBN on your book unless you want to be taken serious as an author, sell it on Amazon, in stores, etc., etc., etc.

There is one company that is authorized to issue ISBNs for books – Bowkers. To put it blunt, they have a monopoly on the market. You know how when you go to Sam’s Club or Costco and because you purchase in bulk, you get a discount? It’s phenomenal. Unlike your personal SSN, which is free, one ISBN from Bowkers is $125.00. Ten ISBNs will run you $295 (there’s no option to just purchase 2 or 3) and 100 ISBNs will set you back $575.00.

Wait … one ISBN is $125, and ten are $295? Just do the math and look at the markup on that shit. $29 each for ten, but $125 for one? That means 100 cost just under $6.00 … ouch. Why the massive markup? It’s just a book identifier that, when I applied for it, took less than 1/10th of a second to be issued. Now, mind you, I went through Createspace, and they most likely purchased 10,000 at a cost of less than ten cents, which again, makes you wonder why the insane markup? What’s even better? Bowkers will sell you barcodes too …

Anyway, this was not a stumbling block in me publishing my book. It was something that didn’t make sense that made me question some things. Nobody has yet to explain why a. there’s no competition, and b. the ridiculous cost.

Just thought I’d share that with everyone.

When I finished the novel, I wrestled with the actual cover of the book. There’s an old saying, “your name will travel farther than you ever will.” The only reason I say that is because I can tell a multitude of people about my book, but the cover of the book will reach more people than I can. I personally believe that the artwork on the cover of your book is just as important as the story itself.

There are two things I think a person shouldn’t sleep on when publishing a book: the editing, and the graphics/cover. I’ll get into the editing in a future post, but for now, I’ll focus on the artwork.

When someone looks at your book, you have a matter of seconds to grab their attention. Shitty artwork/graphics result in a shitty response – take that for what it’s worth. The only time I think you can get away with mediocre artwork is if you have name recognition. If Stephen King puts out another novel, it can be a white cover with black letters and that bitch will sell. Lil Ray Ray puts out a phenomenal story with a BS cover and 99% of consumers will gloss over it.

Years ago, most of your book covers were hand done. They were either photographs, or painted/drawn and then scanned and text was then laid over top. It was a lengthy, time consuming and expensive process. It was a great time for illustrators. There was a concept, a design, layout, and then the basic rendering. From there, once that was approved, it was hand painted and any changes were minor because the concept was well thought out. A book cover could take anywhere from a few weeks to even a few months to do. When I first got into illustration, I was inspired by Drew Struzan (possibly one of the greatest illustrators of all time) – just google him.

Today, artwork on covers in my opinion, is so cookie cutter. Art is just churned out at an insane rate, and much of it is rushed. My first professional cover illustration job came from the Kingdom Publishing Group out of Richmond, VA. I must say that the owners were very generous in giving me the programs – Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign – to create covers, and I’m very grateful to them for that. I would get a cover concept from them, but the turn around was needed within two weeks. As I grew as a digital artist, many times, the cover turnaround time was 3-5 days. It wasn’t just them either. I noticed many publishing companies required a quick turnaround. I think it was like that so they could keep not only their costs down, but market their services to people who didn’t have a ton of money to pour into publishing costs. While that sounds good on the surface, the books that are often pushed out from some (not all) of your smaller publishing companies look cheap because they are. I am not criticizing Kingdom Publishing Group at all – they put out some really good books, but at the same time, the editing in many of them was god awful.

Because I wrote the book, I struggled with a decent cover. I made countless design layouts, and finally decided to let a professional graphics designer handle it. I felt it would be best because I was emotionally connected to the book. Here are a few digital samples I came up with early in the design process.

It wasn’t until I talked with Raymond Goode, author of ‘Through Their Eyes’ and other books that I had a change of heart. He told me, “man, with your talent, you’d be doing your book a disgrace if you didn’t do the cover. It’ll be a way to advertise your artwork in a way you never have.”

That conversation was the reason I scrapped everything and started over. I’ll talk about that design concept on the next post.

For a few months, Latame and I let the novel rest – just sit. We took that time to look into self publishing. There were a few conversations we talked about shopping it to a traditional publisher, but ultimately went with our original decision to self publish. In the self publishing world, the author has to market … I guess that’s where the traditional publisher can justify keeping 90-95% of the money.

There are a shit ton of self publishers out there, and all of them bring something to the table. Because Infinity Publishing had sent me a book on self publishing, I almost went with them right off the bat. It was by accident that I came across http://online-book-publishing-review.toptenreviews.com

This website gives an unbiased review of the top ten self publishing companies. If you go to say, Dogear Publishing, they give a review of all their competitors. You can imagine on their website, they make sure to put themselves above the competition. It reminded me of when Congress got to audit themselves and found no wrongdoing. Really? So can I call the IRS and tell them I audited myself? Of course not. So even though Dogear Publishing may have had some merit to their reviews of other companies, I highly doubt their company faced the same scrutiny they gave the competition.

That being said, http://online-book-publishing-review.toptenreviews.com rates all of the publishing companies with the same rating bar. They rate the publishing package, bookselling reach, the help and support, and any additional paid services. They are not in bed with any of the self publishers, they just rate the services. Unfortunately, not only was Dogear Publishing not on the list of top ten, but Infinity Publishing ranked number nine out of ten. I felt if I was going to self publish it, the top three would have to be what I went with.

At first I looked into Lulu, and then Createspace. Both had good points and bad points, but I felt that any major company has to have some criticism at some point. In its early days, Createspace seems to have cut corners, but over the last few years, have had an overhaul. On my end, Lulu’s website wasn’t the easiest to navigate, but that being said, Createspace didn’t offer what I saw as a comprehensive package: they offered each service individually.

At first, I didn’t care too much for that, but when I looked at it, it made more sense. Plus, they had an “in” with Amazon. Everything would run me close to $3,000. I set up a gofundme – http://www.gofundme.com/t5d37f74. It was pretty easy to setup, but for it to show up in their search engine, I had to have I believe $500 in donations, which made no sense. You can go to gofundme and see people who have no donations to their campaign. However, it was finally added to their search engine. I spammed every friend on Facebook, in my contacts list, and put it out at every event that I went to. I put up $500 of my own money. If I’m going to talk about the good, I have to talk about the bad as well. Unfortunately, Latame didn’t contribute anything. I didn’t get it, but I guess some things happen for a reason.

Finally, I was able to save up enough money and through enough donations, began the process of getting the book published. While I do have enough funds, the gofundme is still up. Any extra donations will go to purchasing books for book shows and to donate to libraries and give some copies away.

Up next … book designs …

Not to delve too much into me leaving the religious cult I was in, but I will say that it had a profound effect on the writing of the novel and most of my life in general. Just to give you a very, very slight insight on how much mental control they had, I was told by my pastor that even though I had a phenomenal art gift, if God gave me that gift, I was doing Him a disservice by making a living at it. Anyone who knows me, knows that even though I talk about my art, I never brag on how good it is. Even now, I feel humbled when I’m given compliments. Over 20 years has gone by since that pastor told me that, and it wasn’t until maybe 5 years ago that I began to seriously pursue my art as a career. Why? Because I was dishonoring God by making money from the gift He gave me. To this day, even though I’m a borderline Atheist, it still impacts me and how I push my passion. The photo above is just a sample piece of my talent.

Now, moving on from that. If the system had that much of a mental and emotional control over my artwork, you can imagine how much control it had over my writing. I was a man in the cult, it was far worse for women. I’ll leave that alone …

For just about all of 2013 until early 2014, I wrote in the book. There are two sides to the book – Jeff’s side, and Lawrence’s side. In the end, their stories begin to intertwine, and without ever knowing each other, they are connected in the most remarkable way. I decided to write all of Jeff’s side, and then upon completion, would write Lawrence’s side. I contacted Latame early on to let him know what I was doing. By this time, Latame too, had not necessarily quit going to church, but was questioning his beliefs.

Early into the writing, Latame told me to let him know when I got finished so we could work on Lawrence’s side together. I still remember when I finished with Jeff’s side, I think in January or February 2014, I called Latame to let him know I was ready to work on Lawrence’s side of the book. Latame let me know that after all those years, he still had Lawrence’s side saved in a Word Doc.

Really? …

Yes … really. Ten years had gone by and he still had that entire section of the book. He emailed it to me, and I have to admit, even though the grammar wasn’t the best, it wasn’t bad. There were changes that needed to be made, but it was a smooth sail from then on.

Even then, I got up in the morning, grabbed my coffee, put on the ‘As Good As It Gets’ soundtrack. (It’s a badass soundtrack … make fun if you want to.) I don’t remember the exact date, but we finished up all the writing in May or June of 2014. After working on it for almost a year straight, I decided to put the book up momentarily and revisit it in a few months to edit it with fresh eyes. I had come a long way, and still had a long way to go.

I still do.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about why I left the religious system I was in, but let’s just say that I realized it was a cult. I was raised in it, so it’s all I knew to be truth. It’s a very touchy subject for me – not because I’m ashamed to talk about, but because it’s emotional to realize everything you’ve ever believed to be true, has no foundation. There’s an empty, barren, emotional desert you have to walk on your own, and it hurts.

At the catalyst of all of this back in 2012, I began to contemplate writing the book again. It wasn’t until June of 2013 that I actually sat down and began to write it all out again. Revisiting all of those old memories was almost emotional. I happened to fall in love with the characters, and it was almost like going down memory lane.

On paper, I had created an entire world, filled with people who didn’t exist, but had characteristics of people I knew. I knew and understood that I had to be careful in how I described people. There is only one person in the book that is specific and was a real person that I knew, and that was Naumbyia German. In the book, her nickname is ‘Pooh’ just like the real person. While I was in Iraq, back in 2009, Naumbyia, who I grew up with, was murdered by her girlfriend/wife, set on fire, and the house, from my understanding, went up in flames. Her girlfriend/wife committed suicide in the house as well. She and I had lost touch through the years, but she was a dear friend to me, and it’s to her that this book is dedicated.

There is one scene in the book where Jeff and Naumbyia meet Carla – that’s one of the last memories I had of being with Naumbyia in real life. We were at a football game and joking on each other. None of the jokes are put in the book. After the game, we all headed to Naumbyia’s house and must have stayed there for several hours. I don’t recall all of the details, but I had to put that moment at the game and insert her there somehow. I’m not here to break down every chapter of the book and give an account as to what inspired those details, but I did want to shed some light on this specific one. In that scene, Naumbyia was the only person who is a real person, and at that game is based off of a real memory I had – joking, laughing, and making fun of each other. Here is a link to just one article about Naumbyia’s final night on earth.

http://www.statesboroherald.com/archives/17968/

Naumbyia is on the left

I wrote something in my art blog – johnpriceart.blogspot.com – that I’ll kind of bring over here, just word it different. Religion – extreme religion – has a way of poisoning things. I believe there are genuine people in every religious system, and I, at one time, was one of those people. As I delved deeper into my so-called Christianity, I began to question the writings of my book.

In this book, there is a suicide, adultery, fornication, ungodly lifestyles, and vulgarity. Someone who calls themselves a Christian, probably shouldn’t be entertained by such filth. I tried to make an inroad for myself though; as many religious people do. It wasn’t any different than a pastor going to a strip club on the low, or watching porn, or getting intoxicated, and giving a bullshit reason as to why it was okay for him.

As we continued to shop the book off to literary agents, I began to not only look into self publishing, but also question my own walk with Jesus. I know that by talking about all this, I may be shooting myself in the foot with the possibility of sales, but this blog is basically about all the struggles of publishing. Willie Tee told me to contact Infinity Publishing (his publisher) and they’d send you a free book on how to self publish. It was my first look into how bad authors are ripped off by the traditional publishing industry. I know, I know, many authors have made a killing at traditional publishing; but when a guy writes a book, sells it for $15.00 and is given .75 of that $15.00 there’s no way in hell you can convince me the publisher has a $14.25 overhead. That’s insane.

Infinity Publishing sent me a book on self publishing, and as I read it, I became excited about the possibility of making this thing happen. At the same time – this is 2004, maybe early 2005 timeframe – I became so convicted within at putting this book out, that I told Latame I needed to take a few weeks off and pray about it.

To his horror, when I came back, I let him know that he was more than welcome to pursue it, but I, in good conscience, could not. I could tell he was conflicted, but at the same time, believed I was making the most Christian decision. To my wife’s horror, I went on my computer and deleted the entire book. Every chapter, wiped clean. I threw away all the disks associated with it, and any printed copies, I burned. Why not just throw them in the trash? What if someone read them and my name was associated with it? I couldn’t let that happen.

From 2005 until 2012/2013, there was no more talk. The book didn’t exist. When people who knew me asked about it, I let them know I was no longer writing it and was focusing on my art.

Religion, extreme religion, really poisons things.

There were times that Latame and I didn’t work on the novel. It wasn’t that we were (not) excited about the storyline, it’s just that there were many factors that kept us from not getting together on a daily basis. We both had families, we were in the Army, so there were field training exercises, different social lives, and we both spent a considerable amount of time in church. I was beginning to struggle with the thought that this might not be the most moral thing to write. From time to time, I put it away and wouldn’t write for several weeks again. I think Latame struggled with it as well. There is some sexually explicit shit in this book, and not something I believe good moral Christians should read or even write for that matter, but I digress.

I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point, we had a finished novel. We combed over it to make sure everything fell into place, and then … we began to talk about shopping it to a publisher. We were so ignorant. We had no idea what we were doing, and the hell if any of our NCOs were going to help us. I read up on the publishing industry and ran across the wonderful world of literary agents. I purchased the guide to literary agents and looked up all of the ones that fell into my genre. I remember taking the book and printing it all out, putting it in a nice binder, and writing out a very sincere letter to the first literary agent. I was excited. I was instructed by multiple guides to shop it to only one literary agent at a time. Most stated that they would take anywhere from 3-4 weeks to respond with either a rejection or acceptance of your manuscript.

To me, it felt like they were being a bit pretentious. It felt like putting in only one job application and waiting for 60 days to see if you’d get an interview. However, regardless of how I felt, I decided to go with the recommended advice. Over a month into waiting, I decided to call. She of course, didn’t feel my manuscript would sell and politely rejected me over the phone. When I asked her why she hadn’t responded, she stated, “because you didn’t send a SASE. Don’t you think it’s kind of rude not to send one?”

I do want to point out that in the requirements to send your manuscript to almost every literary agent, it is a requirement to send a SASE. I honestly thought I had. I packaged that manuscript nicely too and this bitch, instead of taking that into consideration, couldn’t even take 5 minutes to call. I wasn’t worth a response. However … she was right. It was rude of me to send her a $20 package and not include that SASE …

That was the first in maybe 30 rejections from literary agents. Some, even if I sent a SASE, I never even heard back from. About three literary agents in, I thought, “fuck this … this could take years if I wait 3-4 months for every one of them.” Week after week, month after month, I went to the mail to read, “Mr. Price, thank you so much for your submission. At this time we regret to inform you … (fill in the bullshit reason here).

What I found interesting is that every goddamn guide said something along the lines of, “do not send a form letter. Make sure your request letter is specific to xyz literary agent.” So even though I sent out close to 30 letters, each one was specific to them, and if memory serves me correct, I made sure that I wrote each one different. I didn’t want to come off as a mass email/chain letter. The reason I find this interesting, is that almost every response I got, was very similar. Mind you, this is going back to 2003. I’m sure a lot has changed since then.

Was I discouraged? You bet your sweet ass I was. Then I read somewhere that Stephen King’s ‘Carrie’ was rejected by 600 publishers before finally being accepted. I later found that this was not true. He’d been rejected just under 40 times, but at the time, that really struck a nerve with me. J.K. Rowling, and even Margaret Mitchell were rejected multiple times.

While selling artwork at Fort Lee, I ran into Willie Tee, the author of the book, ‘The Winds of Destiny.’ It was he who told me to self publish. I found out through talking to him, that one of the most popular books of all time, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was self published. It was the first real glimmer of hope that I came across. But in the upcoming years, a greater hinderance would cause the book to be put on hold.