Maybe I'm being pessimistic, maybe I'm a dooms-dayer of sorts, but I am eagerly checking my e-mail every day for Covenant Publishers e-mail of rejection. Not that my work is all that bad, it does need some TLC in the copy editing department, but then what first draft to the publisher doesn't need that? Maybe a manual on copy editing, but this is fiction.
My mind often trips on the daydream about what it would be like to have to go on a book tour, even if it is to different LDS bookstores around the US. I've been trying to figure out how I would do it because me traveling a lot isn't good for Sammy, the feathered beast. I know that's silly, but I take my responsibility to her seriously and when you join a flock or become apart of this animals wild kingdom, you need to take that into consideration. She isn't going to understand me being gone for more than a day or two. Sure, people will still be interacting with her, she will get fed but she is mine and I am hers and she misses me. For example, she starts to have a fit (fit means screaming at the top of her lungs) at 5:30pm, about when I should be home from work Monday - Friday. Then, she has to be on my shoulder the rest of the night until bedtime (hers not mine). It's just what birds do when they find their flock. So, this is my idea..... http://www.fleetwoodrv.com/americaneagle/
Not that I can really expect to earn $300,00-400,000 from my first book, but one can dream. This way I can take Sammy with me. Figure out some place to put a cage. She wouldn't really need a big one because she'd just have to sleep in it and eat in it. I'd try to construct a perch for the front seat for her so she can ride up front with me. But I could live in this, and then go to places where I can visit nice places, make the book tour and not have to go to hotel to motel to pension but have a feather bed to sleep in each night, a place to work, a place where I can close the door and know that I am the only one that has slept in the bed, the only one that has padded around the floor in my bare feet. I wouldn't have to worry about eating out because I can cook in.....but I don't really cook but I can learn.
I know, most of you are rotflyao at me right now. But I take my pet stewardship seriously, as all animal owners should. Parrots can live over 50 years, we're not talking a gold fish here. Sammy has an expected life span of 40-75 years. Depending on how well I take care of her. I think she'll live to be 100 considering how I take care of her. But mostly, I think, I don't want to leave her behind if I have to go on any extended tour. If I could get me one of these I could live in it and work remotely from anywhere in the US, Canada or even Mexico (I don't think I'm that adventurous though).
So, this is how I occupy my time while I'm waiting for the rejection. Not that I'm going to get rejected, I know, but I could and then I have to start this process all over again. So, I'd rather dream bout 1/2 million dollar RV's to travel the US in doing book tours than thinking about what I'm going to do if/when they come back with "thank you but no" or worse, send me a form rejection letter....which would truly hurt. That's how Deseret Books done me. And to add insult to injury, the form letter reads like a Jr. High Schooler wrote it.
I'll save the general fear of going to book signings and giving talks about my book and concepts for another blog. Which is another reason why I would need a place like this of my own to go back to and 'recover' if you will.