I expected this…but Shadowknight is not having an easy route to being published. When a new writer says that he or she is fully prepared for rejection…we don’t mean it…honestly! I know a new author has to do the rounds of sometimes dozens of agents before getting a bite, but each of the first ten rejection letters I received cut like a knife. You spend every waking moment for six months immersed in the lives of wholly fictional characters until they are as familiar as friends and family, then go through a curious sense of loss when you finish their story and have to leave them. Worse, you must abandon their exploits to the scrutiny of prospective agents pretending stoically not to care. I know it has ever been so for authors since Bard of Stratford’s day, but with fewer and fewer publishers accepting submissions directly, it’s hook an agent or leave your novel to gather dust in a drawer. Rejections are most often polite, but in their very sparseness of wording they leave questions hanging in the air…was the opening too slow? Did I flesh this or that character out fully? Did any typos slip under the wire? Does anyone love me?

AM I GOOD ENOUGH?

(Cue a pregnant pause with the sound of wind and the possibility of a tumbleweed…)

Watch this space!