And Then...Something.

Hey kids!

Well, it was one of those weird days. My wife and I were exchanging e-mails about will-power and procrastination (in regards to working out at the health club) and I made the correlation that if I had the will-power for my writing & submitting that I had for getting my butt into the gym, I'd have Book 3 done and who-knows-what-else.

Two hours later, I got this e-mail:

Hi, Kingsley,

Hope this email finds you enjoying the summer -- blazing heat and all. I ran your reader, APTLY TITLED KIDS STORY*, past my editorial director and our product manager last month, and, you'll be happy to know, the response was positive.

Sarah, our product manager, thought it was a cute story; however, she also thought that the ending needed reworking. She was confused by the last three spreads, from page 18 to 23 (how did blah blah blah happen? did the whats-it-calleds get them and not his something or other?). I assume the blah blah blah just slipped off on his way back to bed, and he was just too tired to notice, but I don't think it's as clear as it needs to be. See what you can come up with.

SO, I'm sending the edited manuscript back to you, and I'm hoping you'll be willing to take another look at the ending and play with it a bit. If we can all agree on an ending that works, we'd love to put the story into production here.
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Thanks, Kingsley. I'll look forward to your rewrite.

Best,
Editor Lady

*I've made some 'changes' to protect the details of my title, story and etc. Sorry to be vague, but I'm still a little paranoid putting real titles and pieces of my work online. Hopefully that'll change.

So, it sounds good, right? I mean, this isn't the one I thought would get published first (if it even does!) but I'll take it! This piece started out as an entry into a small little rinky-dink local writing contest (and was rejected!), but now with a little retooling and some discipline, sounds like it's going to be my first.

Who knows. Maybe this will be the springboard the rest of my work needs. Maybe this will be how I'll land an agent and get my proverbial foot into the door. At the very least, it'll look nice on my list of writing credits.

Well...it'll look alone on my list of writing credits, but I gotta start somewhere!

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about all of this. Maybe by this time next year, you'll be able to find it on Amazon.com!

(Side note: I checked some of this publisher's titles and yep...you can get 'em on Amazon.)

Okay. Getting ahead of myself. First I gotta rework the ending and then see how it goes. Baby steps, Kingsley. Baby steps...