View in browser
Website    Facebook    Goodreads
One Foot in Front of the Other

Got up today at 5 PM. I sleep late, but I only sleep one day every two. I suffer from Non-24 Hour Wake/Sleep Disorder, making my natural rhythms a 48-hour schedule instead of a 24. It is now nine and I will be awake until 2 AM day after tomorrow.

So I got up and I had my coffee and got straight to work. Went and bought these super rare lightbulbs from Lowes for our basement. Went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of groceries. Made dinner, which was complicated tonight.

Had to make three different meats prepared three different ways. Then mix it with the spiced rice to make my own recipe for Jambalaya. We ate, and now I am here before you talking about the way things have been going lately. Because things have not been well.

I guess it all really started when I decided my blog was getting too big and I needed to do something with it. I got an editor, (her name is Sarah Chorn and she is amazing), I wrote the last section of Teardrop Road and set in motion a chain of events that left the entire house reeling.

Teardrop turned out to be the best thing I had ever written until Normal Street, the second volume of the autobiography. Normal Street contained so much pain and heartache that putting it together broke everything wide open.

Bekah was roused. A part of her that had been put away for decades woke up and she began to once again write poetry. We had to deal with so many things from our past that things she had never really looked at in her life came back to us. We were sent into a spiral of our pasts and our present that still has us dazed.

I wrote the third volume of the autobiography called The Keep and the entire project was finished. Now was the time for submissions. Now was the time for the next step. Because the collected work Reality of the Unreal Mind is going to break everything apart. I have given it to a few beta readers and it has changed everyone’s life. Every person who has read my book has made some sort of change for the better in their life. 

Reality is a force for good. And it is the X factor my career has been needing. We sent it out for submission and it was rejected. Once. But we sent it out to 25 agents. We were rejected one time. That means 24 agents are still thinking about it. It has been months, and while some said in their submission guidelines that if we didn’t hear from them in a few weeks to assume it was a rejection, most promised to get back to us with a response. Those responses have not come.

From what I can tell it works like this. When you send in a cold submission, (a submission the agency has not asked for) your manuscript is given to a reader who works with the agent. They reject almost everything. I have talked to a few of these readers and they have said that in the two years that they did this job they never recommended a piece to the agent they worked for. Those readers get back to you pretty fast. But if they do recommend your piece then it is put on a different stack.

Then it sits on the agent's desk until they get around to reading it. I am pretty sure that Reality has made it this far. Pretty sure that I am being looked at by an actual agent and not their slush reader.

So at any time now I could check my email and there could be a request for the manuscript. Any moment now my life could lift to the next level. If this book is picked up the fantasy work that I put so much of myself into will soar.

I made jambalaya because it takes so many steps. I am writing this article today even though it is nowhere near my deadline. I am going to work on rewrites for a deeply emotional piece tonight that will break me open. When I get to the end of my night I am making Bekah an omelet. I am trying like the devil to keep myself busy because if I looked right now into my inbox my life could instantly change.

But it hasn’t, and it might not. And there is only so many times I can check my email in a single day. So I am fighting to keep myself as busy as I can. Fighting to do anything I can to keep moving forward and not get bogged down in the possibilities.

Because hope is real. But it doesn’t always come quickly. And it’s not just the writing of a book that you have to earn but the success that only comes through patience and keeping yourself moving one foot in front of the other.

Jesse Teller's First Father's Day

I found out last month that I was lied to all my life as to who my father was. I figured this out months after his death, which happened days from releasing a novel I dedicated to him. He was at the time just a man my mother had dated who I wished was my father, but now that wish has come true. I am running a GoFundMe to raise the money to go to his gravesite on Father’s Day to try to make sense of finding him and already having lost him.

If you can help me by donating or sharing my GoFundMe, I would forever appreciate it. Maybe you can help me find some peace.

The Silent War of the Sour Eye


Download this free ebook available exclusively through my newsletter. This short story collection includes "The Banshee," "The Slave," "The Gilded Mares," "Son of the Demontser," and the most recent addition, "The Forge of Souls."

PDF

LATEST EPISODE

Jesse Teller
timea@jesseteller.com

PREVIOUS NEWSLETTERS

March | April | May

Share to Facebook Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Twitter Forward email Forward email

Jesse Teller, 2443 S. Ventura Ave., Springfield, MO  65804 USA

Tired of hearing from me?
Unsubscribe
MailerLite