Life has a funny way of bringing you down, then bouncing you right back up.  I’ve had a string of both rejections and sales recently, the most recent being the rejection of both THE FALL OF JERICHO and RENEGADE at Carina Press.  While I’m disappointed they don’t like my westerns, I have resolved to sell these two stories, as they happen to be two of my favorites.  (Don’t authors say that about every book they write? lol)

Anyhow, undaunted, I’ve decided to send them both on to Samhain Publishing.  However, my editor is currently slammed with submissions, so she can only do one at a time.  She has JERICHO right now, so RENEGADE will have to cool its boot heels a little while longer.  Don’t worry, intrepid western fans, the book is worth the wait. 

Submitting a book is kind of like throwing magnets at a fridge and seeing which one sticks.  However, I’ve never been one to submit a book at more than one house at the same time.  I guess it just kinda rubs me the wrong way to tell one interested publisher that you’re going with the other guy.  So I torture myself by waiting to see what one publisher has to say before resetting the submission clock.

However, if these rejections have gotten me down, a few positive notes have brought me right back up again.  First of all, I got my first round edits on both RIDE THE LIGHTNING and MARK OF THE B*E*A*S*T*.  Both editors said they really liked the stories, but my editor for MotB said she loved the book and could hardly put it down.  Authors LOVE it when the ol’ ego is stroked.  Heh.

My other editor for RtL gave me a great idea for the ending, which I won’t spoil for you, but kind of brings a clash of future meets past in ideology (since it’s a time travel).  That was unexpected, but I loved it, so I added it in.

Also, a couple of my readers have told me out of the blue that they read, and loved, HIGH NOON, my one and only western (currently) at Samhain.  (Thank you Cindy and Kathy!!)

Through all of this hoopla, I have noticed a new trend with eBook pirates.  They’ve found me.  I’ve hidden from them for years, not finding any of my books on the premiere sites, until a few months ago, it was like the Becka Big Bang, and suddenly everyone was pirating my books.  However, since this amazing, disturbing discovery, I’ve noticed my sales have noticeably been on the rise.  Are these two events related?  Probably.  If a reader reads one book for free and really likes it, sure, they can go back for more freebies with the pirates, or sometimes, they can choose to support the author they’ve pirated.

I’m not advocating eBook piracy here, but I’m choosing to look for the silver lining.  If any of my new readers have found me through nefarious means, all I ask is for you to spread the love and get me more readers.  Support a scrounging author!  LOL   Hey, I love me some hot pirates, but even those pirates, at the end of the book, end up buying the cow, even though they probably already got the milk for free… Heheh

So with this grand turn of events, my many rejections, my few acquisitions, I have made a decision.  I’ve told you about my five year goal – from five years ago – and I tried this year, I really did, to break into the big leagues.  But it seems as if the universe at large is telling me “NO!”  Therefore, I will let go of that dream and concentrate all my will and determination to become the Best Damn eBook Author Ever (or at least the most prolific) and try my hardest to become a Big Fish in this eBook pond. (Which won’t be a pond forever, and is even now probably a lake.  With an outlet to the ocean.)  But until the day when everyone is reading eBooks, I want to build my audience, get people to know and recognize my name in eBook romance, and become more than just a “run-of-the-mill eBook author”.

I’ll be THE Rebecca Goings.  And I’ll be kicking some ass.

~~Becka, who thanks the many editors over the years who’ve rejected her stories, for those rejections have now strengthened her resolve to become a force to be reckoned with in the eBook world.