Have you been on a theatre tour?

Afternoon gang,

It's been a while I know but now I'm back. Forgiven? Cool.

Lots going on here at HB towers. We went to The Grand yesterday for a free tour with one of our nieces. Here's the twist. They'd made a mistake with the time and the chap had left. Oops. But about a dozen folk turned up wanting a tour. So a volunteer who just happened to be there for a rehearsal of Carrie's War stepped in and did an impromptu tour. Full marks to him. We got to go on the stage, underneath to the dressing rooms, learned about the history etc and it was very interesting. Needless to say elements of the tour will feature in my upcoming book.

Quick blog traffic update. 7116 views from countries including Sweden, Germany, Latvia, Hungary and Malaysia. I've also done 156 posts!

Anyway, this is another brief post in my ongoing agent adventures series. Last time I'd received my first rejection letter from Random House. That was May 29th.  July 10th brought rejection from Transworld the reason being "there's too much out there" but despite this they said "it was an enjoyable read, your style is accessible and you have a good eye for detail."

July 23rd was marked by rejection from Headline. Marion Donaldson, editor, said "I enjoyed the novel and I think Jamie writes well, but in the end I didn't love it quite enough to want to make you an offer."

My agent, Vivien, went on holiday then and returned in august. August 28th brought rejection from Little Brown. The following weeks saw rejection from Orion and Piatkus.

By this point Vivien felt she'd exhausted all avenues and just like that the dream was over. From April where they had asked to see the book, signing with the agency in May, by the end of August apparently Playground Cool, my debut novel, my MA book, was not up to scratch.

It hit me quite hard but I was convinced it was easily fixed. Book two would stun everyone, Vivien would sell it and I would be back on track. I was very wrong and I didn't react well.

More next time...