Today the sun is shining after a wave of stormy days. But I have an envelope sitting on my desk from Grosset & Dunlap. And I’ll be honest, it’s likely not good news.

My revisions arrived on March 10th and this envelope is postdated March 16th. So for 6 days they have been considering my FlowerMiss story. If it were good news, they would’ve called. So the contents of this envelope is either a flat out rejection (I have a feeling), or more revisions. Would you like to take the ride with me?

So here we go … let’s open this possible rejection together. READY? Okay, I’m going to open the envelope, … (BRACE YOURSELF NESS) …

I see the letter. It’s long. There’s a lot of print on it. I’m going to read it now…

Okay, in a nutshell … this is what they said: Perhaps I could narrow the story down to two characters instead of four, that way there would be more time to focus on developing an emotional connection to my characters. They think my descriptions are beautiful, but still unsure about the storyline as well. They encourage me to send it out to other publishing houses. But they are not interested in it.

…I just had to spend a minute to gather myself together. I’m not crying, but I want to. This is the thing: I JUST GOT HUGE PERSONAL FEEDBACK FROM PENGUIN! That alone is a big deal. Okay, I got rejected but I’m moving forward. Her comments are valid. I just need to spend more time developing this story, but I’m close. I’m almost there.

Whew! Well, I’m going to live. Thanks for taking the ride with me. There will be plenty more coming.