Rejections, bones and fruit

Drifted round Sainsbury's this morning (not my usual shop, you know - I'm a Tesco Girl myself) getting the weekly shop and surprised myself by actually finding everything I wanted. Ye gods. Even the birdseed I'm getting for Gladys as her nursing home room has a bird-table in front of it and she was complaining about the lack of birds. I found it amongst the cat food - which has some kind of food-chain sense, I suppose.

This morning's surprise rejection was from a small publisher for The Gifting - not much of a surprise in itself as Rejection is my middle name. But they had already rejected it last month and, in addition, they addressed the email to Lord H. Is something going on I don't know about? Ah, many many things, I fear. I also fear that (a) I am losing any sense of identity I ever had, and (b) they will reject me again next month and this time will address the email to my mother. Deep sigh. I must be caught in a temporal loop somewhere. Again.

I've also been struggling with scraping out more words for The Bones of Summer and today it's been a real struggle. Even Craig is becoming bored with my indecision and lack of commitment. Poor love. Still, I have peered over the parapet of 63,000 words so feel I can lie down and rest for a while. In the meantime, the glorious Nik Perring has very sweetly edited my short story, How to eat fruit, for me and I have factored those changes in. Huge thanks, Nik - you're a star. As ever. Now I just have to decide what to do with it.

Mind you, I'd best make a decision soon as my memory is likely to run out any day now - I read in the news that women on HRT with lots of oestrogen in it have better memories and are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's. Bearing in mind that I have had apparently virtually no oestrogen since Lord knows when, it's astonishing I can remember my own name. Can I ever make up my lack now?? Which, possibly, brings me round to those rejections again. Maybe I did send a second submission thinking I was Lord H? It's not beyond the realms of possibility ...

Oh, and I've had a response to the Surrey Advertiser article on Thorn in the Flesh. The admin team at the Guildford Sexual Abuse Centre have sent a very lovely email and asked if, given the subject matter of the novel, I might like to donate a signed copy. Which of course I am more than happy to do, even though Kate's story and its ending is very specific to her. They do bloody good work.

Tonight, I'll be minuting the Goldenford meeting and hoping for an early night. Well, playing with words is exhausting, you know. I don't actually have terribly hopeful news on the sales front to give them either - month for month, I'm about one-third down on Thorn sales as compared to Pink Champagne and Apple Juice, the latter selling 60 in the first month as compared to the former's 40. I suppose my usual gay readership isn't biting, and it's not an easy read even for a more mainstream audience. Ah well.

Still, it's not all pain and misery on the literary front (or not as much as usual anyway) - I did get my money from the ALCS today - but only £61. Which is, to my shame, less than every other writer I know! I can only hope that I'm using Lord H's name there too and there might be a second bite of the cherry. Dream on eh ...!

Today's nice things:

1. Nik's help with the short story
2. The response to the Thorn article
3. Goldenford.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website
Goldenford Publishers