The waiting game

 Please join the Wranglers in support of our own Nan Reinhardt, who lost a beloved sister Friday after a valiant fight with cancer. Our sympathy is with rest of Kathi Gasaway’s family, as well. As Nan says to us in the French she loves, bises galore.

     

          I am in a strange kind of writing time right now. I have been here before and will undoubtedly be here again. Now, as every other time, I don’t like it. It’s a time I wish I’d gone the indie route.

    

      I have two books completed and no home yet for either of them. An oldie by any standard you care to set, I feel like a newbie, waiting breathlessly for editorial approval. It’s not that the projects have been rejected—though one of them was by the first publisher I submitted it to—it’s that it’s been a long wait. July for one, August for the other.

          Which makes me remember the bad old early days of my career. When a long wait would have been a year or so (longer if you submitted to certain houses, which I always did) and anything less than three or four months almost always meant a resounding No.

          I remind myself that all things in publishing have changed, that I’m guilty of not keeping up, that sometimes the answer just is No and I need to suck it up, buttercup.

          This was not the post I intended to write. I wanted it to be upbeat, for Nan’s sake; happy, because Christmas is this week and I love Christmas; about sisters, because whether they are by blood, in-law, or made so by friendship, sisters are among life’s most precious things. But the words wouldn’t come.

          So, yes, they wouldn’t. Which means tomorrow—or maybe later in the week—they will. So, yes, I’ll suck it up. Thanks for listening.        

          Merry Christmas!