Well, Fuck.

After almost exactly a year of waiting to find out what the publishers at EDGE and Tesseract Books think of the first seven chapters of my novel (yeah, the first seven chapters), I find out that the main editor has sent it to another reader because she had some mixed thoughts about it. She assured me that was a good thing, because she's a nice person and didn't want to break my heart outright. But this isn't my first go-round on the turnip truck.

I know that sending it to another reader is a nice way of saying that she thought it mostly sucked, but wanted to make sure it entirely sucked before telling me thanks, but no thanks. Don't let the door hit your manuscript in the ass on the way out.

I always make the mistake of assuming that if publishers keep my stuff for a long time, it's a good thing. It's never been a good thing. Give me another four months or so and I'm sure I'll have the definitive no.

This is the same novel that my agent gave up on because he couldn't find a publisher worth his time who liked it. I thought I might have a better chance with a small, Canadian press, especially after I went through the whole damn thing again and cut fifteen thousand words. Guess not. Now I'll need to find another publisher to continue this exercise in pointless masochism.

I suppose I could self-publish it. Yeah, because I'm so excellent at marketing myself.

At least I know for sure that people like my fanfiction. There's just a problem with everything else.