Authors Electric

I wrote my first novel when I was 17 and it was a dreadful, Gothic affair - a blend of Wuthering Heights and Emmerdale, complete with estranged parents, child abuse, strange goings-on in barns, and unrequited love, interspersed with boring conversations about art and life.  I cheerfully sent my masterpiece to a publisher I chose at random in a book shop, and waited for fame to come calling. What should have been my author pic! I received (what I know now was) a lovely letter praising aspects of the novel and suggesting amendments.  If I was to re-write, the editor said, they might just be willing to look at it again. All I saw was rejection - I hurled it into the bottom of the wardrobe and wept.  I knew so little about how the publishing industry worked, or what you were supposed to do, I didn’t even consider sending it to another publisher and I knew nothing about agents. In my twenties I wrote 2 more novels - one, a thriller, set in the middle east where I was l...