Bob Mustin posted about the struggle independent writers face trying to publish, establish a presence and succeed. As it’s known with most creative enterprises, it’s more than just hard work and talent. You also need a little luck, but in a sense, you must push, put yourself out there and keep yourself out there for the luck to find you.
My second novel proved schizophrenic in several ways. I wanted to write something in the vein of the Tony Hillman mysteries and, in fact, in researching for it I drove many of the roads mentioned in the soon-to-be novel, which was originally named The Good Road. I signed it, via my agent, with the Canadian publisher who launched my first novel. When the Canadian firm went under and before the book could go through the editing process, I also lost my agent, whose husband had created some unpublicized malfeasance that killed the agent’s career.
So back to square one.
I shopped the manuscript around myself and eventually signed with a second agent for a six month period. She did nothing with it, and I moved on. At this point I began being interested in small indie publishers. I signed with one in Texas, and a year or so later they wrote me that they were folding; they would…
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