My head hurts

Oh. Hi there. Been a while, huh? Sorry. I've been busy here in the writing dungeon, slaving away at the new book. (That's NOT me at left. I wear a blue tie when I write.)

And the new book is going well. Thank you for asking. ;)

I've also been cruising the Internet lately, where I've been reading all of the doom and gloom reports about the state of publishing today.

I mean right now. Today. This hour. I say that because it seems to be changing that rapidly. Today, agent Rachelle Gardner wrote a blog post saying she's rethinking her previous aversion to self-publishing, partly because it's so difficult to get pubbed the traditional route these days. Publishing houses are paring staff and cutting mid-list authors right and left. It's never been harder, she says, for debut novelists to get published the traditional way.

It's not pretty, especially for someone sitting on one finished manuscript and hard at work on the next. Since most of you reading this have either already written a novel or are writing one now, I don't have to tell you how much work it is, right?

For the record, I have not considered self-publishing. Yet. I honestly believe agents like Nathan Bransford when they say that self-publishing still has that stigma attached to it that might make it even harder to get published the traditional way, i.e., with an agent and publisher. You know, where you actually make money.

Now money is not, nor has it ever been, a major factor in my fiction writing. I am still romantic and naive enough to want my work read by people who might enjoy it. Who might get something intangible from it. To be moved to tears, or laughter. To be entertained.

I've sent out less than twenty queries on The Devil You Don't Know, and have received nothing back as of yet (five are still outstanding, including three I sent just last week). In other words, I'm still early in the process and I'm nowhere near giving up on TDYDK.

But that's not to say I don't worry about the state of the industry. As I've written here before, I left the newspaper industry as it was crashing down around my ears. I then stepped -- quite innocently, I might add -- into the fiction writing industry, only to start hearing rumors of its inevitable and unavoidable demise.

Geez. Is it me or what?

Anyway, my blog friend Annie at http://theinkphantom.blogspot.com/ blogged about this today. She's torn, as I am, about what to do in these chaotic and rather frightening times. Her post is informative and forward-looking, unlike my thrown-together drivel. Please cruise over and read it. It's worth it.

Also, Annie offers some quality help for writers at her blog. She knows her stuff and she's always willing to help out. So if you're reading this, please go over and follow her blog. You won't regret it.

Thank you and carry on.