| Do you ever wonder why all those publishers | | | | stunted at the age of ten when her father died |
| rejected Harry Potter before Bloomsbury took it | | | | rather brutally while saving her life. And the |
| on and made publishing history? I wonder it all the | | | | breadth of my readership indicates my book is |
| time because I have seen, first hand, some of | | | | enormously appealing to fifteen-year-olds all the |
| the nonsensical and humorous reasons a book is | | | | way to sixty-year-olds. But apparently this makes |
| rejected. | | | | it a sales risk. So, how would she view, say, the |
| I wrote one of my novels, seven years before it | | | | Lord of the Rings written for a young audience |
| was finally published. So, why did it take that long | | | | and obsessively loved by adults? Or perhaps she |
| for someone to say yes? I still don't know the | | | | may not have heard of a little novel called Twilight |
| answer to that, because almost without | | | | - published for young adults and bought by almost |
| exception, my rejection letters said: "Loved the | | | | every age you can imagine? And Harry Potter is |
| story, and your writing shows so much promise. | | | | for which specific age group? But maybe the |
| But..." | | | | editor had a point? |
| Which begs the question: When is an enjoyable | | | | One agent believed that to keep her reading, I |
| story and proficient writing, simply not enough? | | | | needed to reveal the answers to the underlying |
| Worse, when did it become secondary to what | | | | mystery much earlier, not near the novel's end. |
| can only be described as irrelevant? | | | | And the rest of the book could then be filled up |
| I once sent the manuscript to a very keen agent | | | | with, well... stuff. Mysteries, it seems, only keep a |
| who later rejected it because she believed my | | | | reader reading when they are no longer a |
| heroine, Shenna, a starving, injured thief, should | | | | mystery. (Perhaps she had just never come |
| have been a vegetarian. In one scene, my | | | | across detective fiction?) But apparently readers |
| fantasy characters sit around an open fire in a | | | | were all willing to wait for seven entire novels, to |
| quasi-medieval world. Shenna's new-found friends - | | | | resolve the mystery between Harry Potter and |
| who are nursing her back to health after an injury | | | | his nemesis Voldemort. But perhaps this agent |
| - offer her some salted lamb. But the agent has | | | | too, had a point? |
| scribbled out lamb and written in 'tofu'. Yes, tofu. | | | | It seems though, that no one told my growing list |
| And it was a point so significant to her, that she | | | | of fans that lamb versus tofu is a serious issue. |
| mentioned it as a reason for rejecting the book. | | | | They seemed to have been too side-tracked with |
| To be fair, Shenna can speak to animals. And she | | | | the page-turning plot and the unforgettable |
| shares an incredible mind-bond with a wolf that is | | | | characters. Neither did anyone mention to them |
| constantly at her side. But let's disregard works | | | | that a mystery should not be revealed at the |
| like Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy, where Fitz | | | | end, but halfway through. Instead they naively |
| speaks to and yet eats animals. And ignore the | | | | had an intense need to know how it ended. And |
| fact that Wolf is a carnivore, so Shenna would | | | | nobody told the adults that they weren't to enjoy |
| have to watch him eat animals. Apart from all of | | | | the book because the main character was a little |
| that, who would actually bother to read it unless | | | | younger than them. Adult readers just couldn't |
| starving Shenna only ate tofu she regularly stole | | | | seem to get past the deep and moving issues |
| from specialist medieval traders of Asian | | | | that Shenna faced. |
| vegetarian products? I think the agent had a point! | | | | It's just as well, with inexperienced readers like |
| One editor enjoyed my novel "very much", but | | | | mine, that our publishing industry keeps a strict |
| claimed the age group was "ambiguous". My | | | | vigil against such serious errors. After all, we can't |
| heroine is youngish - about twenty-one - and in | | | | have page-turning plots, great writing styles and |
| many ways she is childish, having had her life | | | | tofu-free novels sneaking through, can we? |