Cover of Beyond Blood by Sharon A. Crawford, published by Blue Denim Press

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.

~ Charles Caleb Colton

My publisher just delivered my print copy of Beyond Blood and it is bloody good – lots of red on the cover, better than the icon here.

Beyond Blood had a long journey from inception to print. The original story was first conceived in the late 1990s. I researched, wrote, rewrote, rewrote (many times),

Think again, Sharon A.

Sure, one publisher asked for the full manuscript and read it – but rejected it. So did several other publishers who looked at only one to three chapters.

Into the drawer. Hide it on my computer.

Until my short story collection Beyond the Tripping Point was published by Blue Denim Press in fall 2012. Just before that the editor at BDP, Shane and I were talking about a series and I mentioned the closet novel. He was interested in looking at it.

So the big rewrite began. I started working from a printed copy because that is easiest for me to grasp the whole story and scribble notes. Not that I looked at them all when doing the rewrites. Something about putting it down on paper ingrained the changes in my mind. And when I rewrote, the ideas expanded.

I thought it was ready for Blue Denim Press. Not quite. But they were willing for me to have another go. So I did with Shane’s suggestions and fine-tuned it some more. Then I sent it back.

Not quite yet – but they were accepting it. I just needed to do some more rewriting. So, with Shane’s suggestions (and some more ideas of my own that they spawned), I got back to work rewriting. Even hired a freelance editor to proofread it and the author who wrote the back page review even took it upon herself to comment in a few places. So more changes were made.

After a bit more to-ing and fro-ing of questions and comments between Shane and I the bloody manuscript was ready. And I’m not swearing – remember, the novel’s title is Beyond Blood. And that was my original title.

It’s taken 17 years, but Beyond Blood has come to fruition.

So all you “closet” novelists, keep writing and rewriting. Keep persisting. Get feedback.

Don’t give up.

For a peak at what Beyond Blood is about – go to www.bluedenimpress.com Check out the flyer for information on the book launch October 19 – and if you are in the southern Ontario Canada area, come to the book launch.

And stay tuned – the fraternal twin PIs from the Beyond books – Dana Bowman and Bast Overture will be back here starting in next week’s post.

The book at the top of this blog post links to Amazon. Click on Sharon A Crawford for my profile.

For those of us with Kobo’s, here is that link for the e-pub version. http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/beyond-blood-1 And check out my updated web page at www.samcraw.com and click on Beyond Blood. Still more updates on my reading gigs to be added as I get them.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford