THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPT, PART 5: SUCCESS AT LAST ... PSYCH!; or THE RETURN OF THE REVENGE OF THE CURSE

I continued submitting the States of Mercy manuscript to every small-press publisher I could find, new or established. And then, to my great joy, the book was accepted in 2015 by the up-and-coming Double Life Press. This was a year before another small press accepted A Song Without a Melody, so States of Mercy was going to be my first novel to see print (there were a couple others released as e-books back before e-books were a thing, but it's not the same and few folks ever saw them). Imagine how excited I was, imagine how relieved, imagine how anxious when I didn't hear from the publisher again for almost six months or receive the promised contract. Then the e-mail came: DLP, as happens with so many small presses, was folding, and the publisher, AS DOES NOT often happen in the small presses, was suddenly and unexpectedly homeless. The curse had struck again.