Waiting for Word

There’s a scene in the movie Elizabeth where we see the young princess standing in a large courtyard where she’s being held captive. A lone horseman gallops toward her and she thinks he’s coming to tell her that she’s going to be sent to the Tower of London. Instead, he jumps off his horse and kneels to her. Surprise! she’s now the Queen.

I’ve been waiting for a messenger like that all my life, some horseman to gallop up to me and tell me that, at last, I have achieved fame and fortune and my loyal fans await my next move.

I thought when I won the Black Orchid Novella Award in 2018 that I was “on my way.” I dutifully wrote 10 short stories featuring Minerva (as requested by my agent). A few of them actually did appear in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (indeed, a new Minerva story, “Minerva James and the Goddess of the Hearth” appears in the most recent issue of that magazine). I had read dozens of stories in writer’s magazines about how someone published a short story in some literary magazine and the big publishers came offering book contracts.

When my Black Orchid story was published in AHMM, I anxiously sat by the phone waiting for the calls. None came. And that damned horseman never appeared.

My agent–we had parted ways but she agreed to take me on again after the Black Orchid Award–tried 14 different publishers for my first Minerva Novel in 2022. They all said no. “We don’t love it enough,” they said. As if we were on a game show where authors competed for the love of a publisher.

I kept writing anyway. I don’t write for fortune and fame. But I will graciously accept them when they appear.

Since then I’ve published about 20 short stories in many different magazines and anthologies. I’ve been in AHMM 5 times. I placed an article in Writer’s Digest. I appeared three straight times in Dandelion Revolution anthologies.

Nothin.

As reported last month, I have been nominated for the Claymore Award at Killer Nashville four straight years. This year I finally won the award in the Action/Adventure category for “Cleopatra’s Tomb,” a best-selling title if I’ve ever heard one. The motto of Killer Nashville is “We Make It Happen,” in that, if you have a good book, you’ll find an agent or publisher.

So I win. And I hang out in the hotel bar afterward, my shiny award prominently placed before me as I sip beer.

Nothin’. Nada. The big goose egg.

I’m beginning to think that fame and fortune mock me, they give me these shining awards, difficult to win, then laugh at me afterward.

I’m still in Barstow. I still wait for that horseman. But there are no hoofbeats echoing in my courtyard.

Good thing I write because I like it. Otherwise, a fellow would get permanently discouraged.