Starts and Stops
On July 11, 2023, I reached a milestone, accomplishing a long-range goal, on my publishing journey … An acceptance for my novella, Death in the Cards.
It didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t easy. I knew I could write. The problem was finding somebody, other than myself, to publish my work.
According to my notes, I started writing my novella Death in the Cards on June 22, 2022 and finished editing the final draft on November 6, 2022. My personal editor had reviewed it and I had presented it chapter by chapter at the weekly meetings of the Pinellas Writers critique group I belong to. Their comments and suggestions were invaluable in getting the manuscript complete and edited.
I was ready to send it out into the world.
Since the manuscript was about 29,000 words, a novella by definition, I knew there was no point in it to sending it any agent, as their focus is generally on novel-length books. Instead I intended submitting to smaller independent presses who would be more likely to consider publishing a novella. Research online produced an initial list of twenty small, independent publishers of horror, dark, weird fiction, who I thought might be interested.
I drafted a query letter with this tag line:
Want to get rid of that pesky somebody? Have a Tarot reading with Queenie. It's all in the cards... for a hefty fee! Naïve Janeen signs on as apprentice to read Tarot with Queenie, and becomes caught up in her dark readings, offering clients deadly solutions to their problems, courtesy of the Tarot. But is Janeen strong enough to protect herself against Queenie’s sorcery? The older woman has no intention of letting a novice get the best of her. Janeen's bold challenge and Queenie's unscrupulous offense finally come to a head. There can only be one Master.
I submitted the query letter and manuscript (or a sample as requested) to the first seven presses on my list and prepared to wait. Three of the seven rejected me the very next day. A fourth sent the rejection in five days. On the sixth day, I opened the email expecting another rejection, but instead I got this:
Hello Susan, Thank you for sending the first three chapters of your novella, Death in the Cards, to ____ Publishing for consideration. I love your writing style and am intrigued about where this story will go. Please accept this as my formal request for the rest of the manuscript.
I was jumping for joy and wasted no time sending the full manuscript back to her the same day. And then I waited … and waited …
Every writer I knew who had dealt with publishers told me I would wait a long time, sometimes months, before the publishing deals would be finalized. I had no problem with that. I could be patient, especially when the email sounded so positive.
Three months after submitting the original seven, I got a rejection from another of the small presses, and a few weeks after that, a rejection came from the last of the bunch. Still, I heard nothing back from the publisher who wanted my full manuscript. Still, I waited. In the meantime, I saw her posting on Facebook about the other books that her press had contracted with to publish their books. I got only crickets.
Four months after the email requesting my full manuscript, I sent an inquiry, with the tone light and polite, requesting a status update. She ghosted me, and I never heard another word from her.
Chalk it up to experience. Time to move on.
I submitted Death in the Cards to the next eight publishers on my list. Within three months I was rejected by four of them. Two liked my work, but not enough to publish it, apparently, and asked me to keep them in mind for future submissions.
There were four presses who hadn’t responded. Then I saw a posted call for submissions from another small independent horror publisher that seemed relatively new on the scene. I decided to give it a try, and sent my query and manuscript on March 23, 2023.
And then I waited …
On July 11, I opened my email to find a message from Christopher Pelton, the owner and editor at PsychoToxin, telling me he loved my story and wanted to publish it. I accepted, and he sent the contract for me to review. I signed and returned it the next day.
And so Death in the Cards reached the first destination on its long and winding road.
What’s next?
All the work that goes into making a book
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