Best,

Pamela DuMond

If anyone on this thread would like to FB me, please be my guest. I don’t bite. I’m even friends with Jacqueline Carey.

I’ll be honest. At first I approached self-published novels with reticence. I simply didn’t have time to find the gold among the pyrite. However, the past three books I’ve purchased have been eBooks published by the author. And they are much better than any of the hardcopies languishing on my nightstand. The authors had similar stories as yours – they were agented at one time or came close to landing a deal but didn’t. My tastes are far more eclectic that those of the mainstream, so I have problems finding legacy-published books that pique my interest.

Right now, I’m getting a lot of “Really like it; don’t think I can sell it, though.” This is extremely helpful information for me. I put a pause on the query route as of this week. I have one more partial to get out – I must make good on my word – after which I’m considering a new strategy entirely. ☺

Wow, Tracy, you went through tough times. I’m glad you all are stable.

In 2009 I signed with a new agent at a top agency. She shopped my comedic mystery to mystery and commercial women’s fiction editors. Who all rejected it. June, 2010 I was in the middle of a re-write to send it to romance editors when I discovered, via an internet site, that my agent was no longer at the agency. Because my ms hadn’t sold yet, the agency let me go as well.

Heartbroken, I called a friend. She gave my ms to an Indie Publisher. He loved it and I went the Indie route. Cupcakes, Lies, and Dead Guys was published in Nov. 2010. It’s doing great on e-books. Not so great in paper, as there is no distribution.

I’m now writing the sequel to Cupcakes, as well as a completely un-related YA romance thriller. I’ll be seeking agent representation again in the near future.

I think you just have to persevere. That’s all you can really do.

Best,

When I started my novel, I was pregnant with my first son. We had saved up enough to cover the expenses that our student insurance could not. We planned on a normal birth, which is not what we got. My son got stuck on the way out. They turned to an emergency c-section, worried the cord might be wrapped around his throat. It was not, but he had a hole in his lung. He was taken to the NICU and I went home with no baby. Two weeks later, he came home. A month later, I went back into the hospital with extra complication from the birth.

My son is now a healthy and happy little boy, but the expenses of his birth were beyond what we planned. Even with insurance and additional help, we were buried in debt. My novel was put on the back burner as we worked to pay off out debts. That was three years ago. Once our situation was stable, I was able to get out my laptop and set aside time each day to work on the book. Now, I’ve finished it, and I’m very excited about even that accomplishment. Considering all the time and drama between start and finish, I rejoice that I did that much. Getting an agent or publisher in the future will be an enhancement of that accomplishment. I want to encourage other writer’s to recognize the magnitude of their own perseverance when they simply finish! So many people set out to write a novel, and never get to the end.

There are plenty of others with stories like mine, both related to writing and not, where persistence brought success. Let’s keep at it fellow authors!