My college Kid has a summer internship job with City Beat Magazine, a local entertainment paper that comes out weekly.  (Writers run in this family!)  She and I were able to share a ride into town, which was nice.  Somehow we arrived downtown early and had time to go into the Mediterranean restaurant for gyros. She ate, but I had them wrap up my falafel sandwich because I just didn’t want to meet big time lawyers with gyro breath and greasy greek sandwich hands, ya know?  I would eat after the meeting on my own.

While we were waiting on our food, I received a call from the high school principal.  He wants to interview me for an ESL opening!  Wow!  I have a Spanish license but not ESL, but he said he knew that and I should come in anyway.  This is a great foot in the door at my 1st choice to work at school, so why not?  My chances of being hires for ESL without the actual license are slim, but I also know this job was posted a long time ago, (May-June), and they did hire someone, and so they got dumped a week before school starts! So I am waiting to hear either today or tomorrow about the special needs academic aide position plus I have this ESL chance.  Wish me more luck!

Back to Downtown...

I had two hours to kill before my meeting when College Kid went off to her job site for her 4 hour gig.  I hiked up to the Carew Tower, where the office was / is and looked in the shops down below.  Boring...Really a sign of depressed times.  The Tower Place Mall is so deserted.  The food court and a TJ Maxx is all that is open and functioning, so I got the brilliant idea to go up in the Carew Tower to the top to look around. Carew Tower is our highest building.  It’s baby stuff compared to the Sears Tower or even the Empire State Building, but it’s ours.  Actually, looks wise, the CT is a baby Empire State...Same type of bricks or blocks, similar inside with all the art-deco trim and flooring.  I love how it echos.  The CT is 48 stories and only costs $2.  I took some photos, which came off pretty nice from just a phone, hung out for about 15 minutes then went back down.  My heels were rubbing raw, and my feet were dying.  Not a good time to have a bad shoe day.  Anyway, I grinned and made it fine through my meeting w the attorney and his associate.  I had all 12 of my questions answered, and they gave me a booklet about legal issues for writers.   The guys were totally impressed with how I was organized!  haha!
(They should see my house...NOT!)  

Most importantly, the legal eagles advised me to go with book publishing first. Try for at least a year.  It’s worth it if it’s that good.  They say the e / iBook market is growing, but it is such a small percentage of sales, and will be most likely 5-10 years before it’s as common and as easy and affordable to all as iTunes did for our CD and record collections several years ago.  It won’t happen to books that fast, and I limit my market share to go electronic.  This was the sweet music I wanted to hear from someone who knows the business better than I do.

Came back down the elevator after shaking hands and collecting business cards, intending to eat that sandwich, which had been marinading in a white sack inside my Vera Bradley purse all this time.  I also pulled out the phone to check messages and found this:

Hello, Ms. Strickland,

Thank you for your submission.  I’m intrigued by your story.  However, since we‘re a VERY small publishing company, we already have our hands full with our newest release, “It Just Hasn’t Happened Yet“.  This is the first book we’ve had with national exposure, and all of our efforts are going toward making that as successful as possible.  We expect that to take up the better part of the next year.  After that, we have another book by the same author slated to be released (either in 2011 or 2012, depending on how publicity and sales for the current book go).

However, since I think you have an interesting story (my oldest son was also premature and he still has a lot of issues developmentally) and a good starting point for the “tone” of the book, I would be willing to look at the whole manuscript again in the future.  In the meantime, since I don’t want you waiting on us, please continue to send it out to other publishing companies, too.  With luck, a larger company will be interested in it, as I know they would have far greater resources for PR and marketing than we do.  If you don’t hear from any of them, please do contact me again in November 2011.  

Thank you again for your interest and please do keep in touch.

Sincerely,____________

This editor is local.  There are 4 local publishers in town here.  I had asked the lawyers what they knew about any of them, and they only were aware of one.  I had Googled four.
This publisher is indeed small...I like that...They get to know you there...and was started by a UC college prof who wanted to get textbooks he’d written published.  It is growing to become more commercial.  

Oh my goodness!  What a boost to receive such a message.  What a feeling it is to know that I touched somebody’s life already with what I wrote in Chapter One.  It is relatable and a reader CAN get hooked.  I “intrigued” her!!!!!

College Kid is all thrilled.  My mom is amazed and thrilled.
This is the taste of success.
It will happen in full. I just know it.
P.