In which I just say no….I think.  Yes, that’s right.  No.

It’s been some time since I updated you on Mr Middleton developments.  This is probably because I have been hesitant, not wanting to disappoint, and not wanting to jinx future efforts.

This is what happened after the last post, at which point, Hoang and I were about to tackle the world of publishers.

The major publisher who was interested, was not interested in a stand-alone, illustrated book. They liked my writing, and they liked the drawings, but it was just not their mainstream fare.  They said they would like to see a collection of short stories from me.  

As my husband likes to tell people, I turned them down.  It wasn’t really like that: there was no firm offer, just their interest.  Still – why would I walk away from a major publisher?  Having them interested at all was a coup.  I told myself this, about one hundred and twelve times.

But the bottom line was, my heart was not in writing more short stories, not right now.  I was very motivated to write a long-form story which I am working on now; and I was motivated to see Mr Middleton published with pictures; but I was not remotely motivated to do a short story collection.  And I couldn’t force myself to do it.  To do so would be to betray the process; and as every writer knows, to betray the process is to betray yourself.

So….my husband and I got busy with postage, packing tape and brown paper.  We sent the package of illustrations,story and synopsis, all lovingly presented in a brown box wrapped in string, to ten publishers who seemed to have published like-books in the past.

And we waited.

To be continued.