Musings from the Desk

There are days when I just don't understand the publishing world.

When my novel, The Last River Child, came out I was surprised by how much I was expected to promote the book myself. I was completely unprepared and found myself on a quick, steep learning curve to finding ways to get the book reviewed and myself interviewed. I was so grateful to everyone who helped me along the way and gave my book a mention.

When things settled down with promoting Last River Child I decided to use this blog to help other writers by adding author interviews and the occasional book review. I decided to focus on two areas that I thought would be of interest to you, my readers: books about writing and the creative process (Laraine Herring, author of "The Writing Warrior" and "Writing Begins with the Breath" was our first guest) and also first time authors from small presses (Erika Dreifus, author of the short story collection, "The Quiet Americans" kicked off that series).

And so I have been contacting authors when I have the time to try and arrange reviews/interviews. So far all of the authors have responded enthusiastically and it has been fun for me to 'meet' new writers. But today I learned one of the publishers was not willing to send me a review copy until they knew how much traffic my blog received. I have sent them the numbers and now am waiting and see if they deem this blog worth whatever the postage will cost them to send me a book. All day this has been making me feel sad and weird. It is so tough to get a book written, and it is so tough to get a book published, and it is so tough to get a book some press. I thought it would be easier to help other writers with their books but today it felt like it was even tough to do that! I'm probably just tired and having a bad day but that's how things felt at the desk today.

(As for this writer, don't worry. I am looking forward to having them as a guest on First Lines and they will make an appearance here, whatever their publisher decides.)