So, I heard back from that agent. They have decided to pass...for now. Told me a few of them really liked it but that it was in need of too much editing and they are short staffed. Recommended I find myself a good freelance editor and have them go over it. All well and good if you have the money, but I don't have 40-50 bucks an hour to pay someone to do that right now. The only thing I can do really is plod along, pass my test on this insurance crap, and have Jamie do the best she can until she is a real editor...well, I want her to anyway. She would be great, and I could get stuff for free LOL. Maybe once I'm up and selling insurance I'll be in a position to get them edited correctly. I'm kind of bummed but to be honest, felt that they should all get some serious editing done on them but just haven't had the money. UUUUGGGGHHHHH. I feel like Charletta Fucking Brown today. :(

Okay,

That sucks.

Everything we write and go over until we are blue in the face can always use some editing. The problem is they are looking at genre tropes and adherence to certain marketing-based concerns, not necessarily English usage.

See if you can find a genre style guide and have Jamie read it.

Look your Estelle Staab stuff is real good and the Love Bites stuff is better. Do not stop writing.

The editing-publishing end is in big turmoil for now and for a while to come—it's not you. My boxing history books were cancelled by the publisher even though the editor loved it. He [the publisher] was right. After the 2008 crash people stopped buying big history books in that format. I have only sold a handful online.

Here is something of mine that I just edited which I think is among my best and I will tell Erique to place as a hardback.

Please archive this.

Consider it done Doodle :0)

Well, I'm not too disheartened just yet. I'm just wondering what I should do at this point. I have four (well almost four) completed novels. I'm not sure if I should just pull them from Amazon and keep reworking them until I have a solid bite with an agent/publisher, or if I should leave them as is, continue to try and sell what I've done and when I get the money, have them edited professionally. I know it's very important for professional editing and everything I've ever read on writing says not to skimp on that part, and that it's vital. I think like most writers I know there is always room for improvement, and I only want my best stuff out there for the public to see. I think I'll email a few writers, you're the first obviously, and maybe some writers groups and see what their thoughts are on the subject. Let me know what you think Doll.

Do not pull them from Amazon unless you rework your manuscript and are set to reissue it as a 2nd edition the same day.

I personally am glad to be free of an editor, as I intentionally play with the language and do unconventional things. Part of an editor's job is to make sure you do not rise above the rest of the field—no shit, it is true. If an editor does his work, your sales will go up and in the end your work will go into the dustbin of history to be forgotten. Melville, Howard, Burton, Heinlein all got loads of shit from editors and librarians. The writers that had far more success than they in their day, where are they? Look in the dust bin. But the four hardheads above are still being read. I once read an entire book of Heinlein's letters, Grumbles from the Grave, which amounted to him fighting with editors.

You did an excellent job proofing Forty Hands for me, and correctly corrected me on quite a few grammatical points, and I went against your advice 70% of the time because I am a jerk, and Yusuf is a Jerk, and Abdul speaks incorrectly just to get an angle in a conversation, and I spelled Eden as Aden to give the curious map-savvy reader a feeling for how living in a murky medieval multilingual society is less precise in word than life in our own. I know that if I sell that thing to a publisher they're going to trash all that and I'm going to let them so I can get paid—because I'm a whore—but I'm also going to keep ebook and hardback rights so that the real deal will be out there.

In a lot of way we are so much luckier than the four writers I mentioned above.

What I suggest is you do some writing on a sell-out level, just doing what editors want to maximize sales through your conventional agents, and have that professionally edited if you can afford it. Use those interactions as your classroom so that you can better edit your exclusive projects. Write a parallel stream of work to satisfy your writing soul. And you know what, those will be the works that are being read in 75 years, the stuff your grandchildren might get paid for. Also do not forget that the real money is in getting your stuff optioned for comics, movies and games, and those people are just going to tear your work apart until it looks like something you wrote when you were ten anyhow.

I'm sending a link that applies.

Just keep writing and realize that agents and editors live in a curiously porous seedbed of envy that ironically positions them to judge those they envy.

Good luck Sheri, and thanks for archiving my proofs.