I have just signed a contract… the Pre-Acquisition Agreement Mac Millan. I am very excited because Macmillan is one of the “Big 5” publishers in English. The books they sell are among those likely to end up on the best seller list. And the book I am selling them is my first: The Bible According to Eve: Women of the Torah. I am hoping they buy the three sequels and Faust in Love… then I can work on getting Poor Folk sold, and maybe some of my other novels like Brazil; Discovering Wonderland; and Loveless Love.
Of course, I hope that I shall write more in 2022-2023:
Children of the Cat Goddess;
Tales of the Land of the Firebird, Part I;
In Honor of Khashoggi;
Further Tales of Opossum Creek;
This Land Was Made for You and Me;
Oz Revisited;
Jeanie and the Gentlefolk.
Still, while I research–and I am embarrassed to say I am in the research faze of Tales of the Land of the Firebird–I still hope to sell some of my completed work. The business side of writing is always the hardest… the research is fun except that it takes so long; the writing is fun; the editing is laborsome but not unenjoyable; but everyone who has ever written knows that it is a form of purgatory to write the cover letter and search for somebody, anybody, interested in selling your book. And yet it must be done, or all of your labors are for naught. Of course in literary history there have been exceptions: Emily Dickinson’s family and friends were the ones who published her work; the same was true of Franz Kafka. Yet most writers must be business people of a sort…
In saying all of this, I don’t mean to sound crass–sometimes in my prayers in life I wonder what God thinks of my prayers for money–but if I could only sell enough copies of my first book to get me back into the Middle Class (which is what my mom is), I could die happy. It has been my dream since birth that I be a great writer like Charles Dickens or Charlotte Brontë, but even if like Melville I was discovered only after my death it would be something… Anyway, whether I am on my ways to a minor success or a great success, I can feel it coming. That is what a big publishing house interested in my work could be.