I sort of feel like I’m caught in my own personal version of “Ground Hog Day” with a vague notion of what transpired in the past few days and weeks. The projects, repair jobs and tasks during last nine months have taken forever to complete.  Ideas and strategies materialize at a sluggish pace.  As if I was trying to jog in a chest high syrupy Jell-O; slowly I press forward.

So it is with this blog.

I just finished rereading Hemmingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES and we’ll screen the 1957 adaption with Tyron Power, Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn and Eddie Albert in the next few days.  I’ve read that Hemmingway’s ‘Lost Generation’ fellow expatriates were the basis for the characters in this classic story, it would be interesting to research which of his friends were the basis for the different characters in the story.

Conversely I expect that many authors’ inspiration for their character’s traits come from personal introspection.  I can see various parts of myself in most of the characters in my stories.  Such is the case with my main character in The Littlest Dragon and the Princess.  The Littlest Dragon’s strongest trait is his persistence.  Once he has a goal he doesn’t give up.  In retrospect looking back at my life I wonder where the inspirations have come from but it was my persistence that them to reach completion.

It’s been over two years since I’ve been posting to this blog though I haven’t been as regular as I had hoped.  I now realize that when I began working on this platform that I was unprepared, unknowledgeable and basically in the dark about the process of how to get published.

Writing the story was an exhilarating if not confusing at times but I believed that because of the way in which the story developed especially those times when the story seemed to write itself and the characters began to tell me what they wanted to say that this story was an exception to the usual way that books get published.  That it was meant to be.  When this didn’t happen I was disappointed and frustrated so I went back to the beginning and began searching for clues from other authors for the critical steps that I needed to take to become recognized.

My first set of queries was spread over a three-month period of time.  Not having a positive response I’ve spent the last two years reading KidLit and searching for avenues into the publishing world.  Repeatedly I’ve read that many agents and publishers were looking for something that was fresh, however I suspect that if a story is too different from what’s been published it’s hard to make a comparison and therefore it would be difficult for the story to find success.

I’ve had little success looking for similar books because my story seems so different but while searching for stories that featured animals I came across Richard Adams’ WATERSHIP DOWN.  I found the amount of negativity that Richard had to endure while seeking representation interesting and reassuring but most interesting was his strategy to find an agent.  He searched for an agent that had represented books that were similar to WATERSHIP DOWN.  I’m still looking but feel closer to achieving my goal.

It’s interesting how this project’s has grown in complexity.  I had been constantly reminded that the creation of a book was the easy part.  Finding an agent and getting it published was the difficult part.

Since I was amazed at the magical manner in which the story was revealed to me I wanted to be the exception to the rule.  Now five months since completing the final drawings and eight weeks since finishing the final version of the manuscript I’m still researching publishers, agents and sending out queries.

One of the problems is that it’s hard for an editor or any other person operating the door of acceptance to know what a successful book looks like.  Years ago I took a number to writing classes at U.C.L.A. ext.  At the beginning of the first class the teacher, Tara Ison, makes the interesting statement, “Nobody in Hollywood knows what a successful screenplay looks like.”

Then she went on to tell her story about a script she wrote with her writing partner and all of the difficulty getting it picked up.  Finally an agent agreed to represent them but told them NEVER show the scrip to anyone again, it just wasn’t a good idea.  They agreed, spent about a year writing other works without success and finally parted ways with the agent.  They returned to their first script, worked it a little and after awhile it finally was made.  The result was the commercially successful “DON’T TELL MOM THE BABYSITTER IS DEAD,” giving Christina Applegate her first staring role.

Finally a break with my research I was able to share this post and I’m back to the work of queries and submissions.