Tonight, we pick up the pieces!

Ahem.

You guessed it.

Following on from our rapturous little blog post from two weeks ago, word for word, Jo Hayes at Bell Lomax Moreton says,

Dear Veronica (she writes),

RE: Ashbourne Hauntings

Thank you for sending us your above book to review.

After extensive consideration, we do not feel that we are the right agency to represent your proposed material.

We wish you all the best with the publication and success of your work.

Best,

Josephine Hayes

Well. My squished-bugness is twitching, guts everywhere, a little leg lobbed somewhere over on the far side of the street. Somehow, this equates to not just rejection but rather explosive rejection.

A cup of coffee later, though (and really we can't say enough good things about coffee), I recall the other dozen or so literary agencies that are still pending, and the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of agencies all over the world that I haven't queried yet, and I remember that it is not the end of the world. Perhaps just the end of this one little chapter.

If Nabokov can publish Lolita at all, especially in 1955, after having been rejected by four, count 'em, four publishers, why... there has to be hope for me, hasn't there?

Hasn't there?

YES!