Those rejections…

I just got a couple rejection notices. I had submitted Seven Thunders again earlier this year, and finally got word back. I submitted a chapter of Collider, got word back. But I guess I used to have a harder problem with that. I just took them in stride. Trying to be stoic about it, maybe. Or maybe it’s because I’ve grown a little dull to the idea after all the self-publishing. I don’t get any actual sales from that. I’m not exactly slick about it. There were a lot of bloggers who figured this out, just among the communities I joined a decade or so back. Some of them absolutely, shamelessly manipulated the system. I never cared for that. I never cared for the reciprocity game. I don’t find integrity in reviews, either, that are disingenuous (“I never read this genre but somehow still loved this book by this buddy o’ mine”). And I certainly have the sales to show for it. I’m actually not sure I’ve ever made a sale to a blogging acquaintance. I actively stopped converting to ebooks when it became clear good ol’ Pat would swoop in on promotion days to get them for free. I certainly bought my fair share of free books that way, I know, and it almost always led to disappointment. 

But I’m thinking, set up one more blog, a dedicated Danab Cycle blog, and centralize promotion, chatter. If I opt for that. I always had big dreams for this. But now I have two completed manuscripts, and I guess my patience for the publishing world grows thin. I just don’t know how to do it. 

It’s a thought, anyway. I try not to be cynical. I know my efforts aren’t ever really that prolonged. I know I’m prone to giving up. Part of this is because I’m also a big fan of comic books. In that medium all of this works. I did find out it doesn’t exactly work to get into comics, either. So there’s that. But comic book creators are always hopping, throughout their careers, all over the place, and no one bats an eye. I mean, Marvel just inked a deal to publish John Byrne’s indy X-Men. 

I know I have the itch to write. It’s the getting published that was always the problem, or finding myself in scenarios that successfully led in that direction. Then self-publishing became just so darn easy…

Anyway, we’ll see.