Every time I think about quitting, something good happens to pull me back again. I have been a romance novelist for about a year, and it has been one long, bumpy ride. For six months, I wrote Glamour Ghost while visitng the ER seventeen times due to an undiagnosed stomach problem. I was very grateful to Jay for writing a review and posting it on the Reader website. At least it got some attention. I have sold a few copies without any advertising. The truth is, after twelve years of being in the animal rescue business, I'm as broke as broke can be. So paying for advertising is out of the question, even if it isn't very costly. During the worst part of the recession, I adopted three dogs and I already had one. To be honest, I've rarely had less than three for years. Times were tough. I spent no money on myself. And last year, one dog required surgery costing $700. What could I do but fork over the money to pay for it? A year later, I had to put the dog down because it turned viscious. She had been a very badly damaged dog before I got her and her true self finally came out.

I wrote another novel, Cha-Cha in the Hood. I entered both stories in a contest sponsored by Romance Writers of America. I paid about $65 to print out several copies of the stories and the submission forms. After submitting them, the chapter president had the gall to announce that she would "try to get" published authors to judge the contest. Gee, shouldn't the judges already be in place before you take everybody's money?

I tried to get a refund but the powers-that-be wouldn't give me one. When the results finally came, I couldn't read the feedback from one judge. It was illegible. And the other one, to paraphrase, told me not to quit my day job. Too late. I've already been published in several major magazines including Good Housekeeping. And the third judge didn't appear as promised. Guess they couldn't find one so that copy went in the trash.

The monthly meetings of Romance Writers of America are held at the Seven Seas Hotel in Mission Valley. It's a dump. The air conditioning over my table was broken and wouldn't turn off so all winter I froze while I ate the salads they served me. I'm a vegetarian and for some reason people always want to feed me fruit and cottage cheese when in reality I can eat many things including the spaghetti the other women were eating.

Anyway, my ranking in the contest was in the middle. I didn't get any helpful feedback which is pretty typical of the RWA contests from what I've heard. One woman complained that she was told she used too many semi-colons in her story. Do you honestly think if the Fifty Shades trilogy had too many semi-colons the editor would have turned it down? Hell no. Semi-colons are the least of an editor's worries if she can find a sensational story.

I was amazed the day the winners of the contest were announced. One finalist sat at the very same table as the women who only weeks before said they were the ones putting on the contest. What a coincidence! My mouth nearly hit the floor at the brazen, shameless audacity those women have. I got up and left, totally disgusted and never to return as the women who put on the contest patted this girl on the back.

For days afterward, I stewed and fumed with rage. I finally expressed my disappointment to the woman who ran the contest, She also sat at the same table as the finalist. She had come up to me before the meeting started and said, "Oh, so you're Mindy. I've wanted to know who you are." I perceived her words as some kind of veiled threat. Bring it on, baby. Now that I hate you, I'll nail your ass to the floor.

Instead of having the decency to explain why the finalist was the judges' friend, she accused me and another contestant of cyber-bullying her and threatened to tell on us to the women of the national organization. Can you believe a woman in her forties would act like this? Even at her advanced age, she needs to grow up.

Before leaving for good, I did contact the national organization accusing the women in the San Diego chapter of being unethical. I received a very rude e-mail back telling me that the national organization didn't tell the local chapters what to do and she had the audacity to accuse me of not paying my dues. What is up with these women and their dues paying? Not only did I pay my dues, but every month I was almost denied access at the door. I got in the habit of bringing my Paypal receipts with me because I was constantly accused of crashing and I thought the women might not let me in.

I stewed about these events for days. Even one of the agents who spoke at a meeting accused writers of being unethical. I didn't know what she was talking about at the time, but I certainly found out. When I continued to rage, my friend summed up the situation by saying, "Mindy, these aren't the top guys."

He's absolutely right. They are a classless, unethical bunch of nobodies. You'll never see someone at Good Housekeeping acting like this. Laura Mathews was a class act all the way and made me feel appreciated.

Now, I don't get the benefits of listening to speakers like Maya Banks, who is the hottest romance writer today and who has just gotten a seven-figure book deal; and, I won't be reading the outstanding magazine that comes with a membership either.

I started another novel and hated it so I tossed it aside. Luckily, many publishers including Harlequin are willing to accept submissions for e-books without representation. The market seems to be a writer's paradise right now. But I really don't know the market. I haven't read romances since the 1970s when I was hooked on books by Danielle Steel (and the Reader, congrats on 40 years). The only way I could figure out what was going on was by studying the kind of e-books I want to write. But somehow, I managed to get a virus in my computer and among other things, it wiped out my Kindle reader for the pc and all of the books I had on it.

I suppose it will cost $250 to get the virus removed like it did last time. And over the summer, my transmission wouldn't work, not that I could afford gas anyway. The bus routes have been cut back so the nearest bus stop is two miles away. That's a long trek for an old lady with bronchitis and allergies when the temperature is hovering around eighty-five degrees. I also had to buy a new dryer at one of those rent-to-own places because riding the bus to the transit center and then walking ten blocks to the laundro-mat was killing me. By the end of August, I had caught the cold that was going around.

Without any e-books to guide me, I tried to write two stories the best I could. Both were promptly rejected by editors. And I thought, what am I doing this for? Why not just lay in bed all day like my ex-husband who hangs his gut out and blazes a trail from the bed to the fridge? I may eventually get a few books published but I probably won't make much money at it. Why try?

Whenever I think about giving up, God sends me a sign that I should stay in the game. The very next day which was yesterday, I got an e-mail that said my first novel, Glamour Ghost, was picked up by Barnes & Noble. Hurray! There are certainly worse places for an indie book to end up. After telling Jay Allen Sanford and my mother the good news, I decided to keep writing.

Best,

M.

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