The Wall of Unwanted BooksByCharlesAtkins" I have learned, that if one advances confidently in thedirection of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, hewill meet with a success unexpected in common hours." --HenryDavid ThoreauDo all authorshave a drawer of unpublished books?  Oris this just me?  As I hit the finalpre-release weeks of one-such manuscript that will finally be published, thereare numerous lessons to be learned.  Butas so much with writing it's more about the showing than the telling.  So here's the story of how VULTURES ATTWILIGHT, which I wrote over a decade ago as a charming Connecticut cozy withtwo older female protagonists (for those not used to the term "cozy"it refers to a not-terribly gory murder mystery often set in a small town--AgathaChristie's Miss Marple is the archetype), will now come out as my first lesbian-themednovel.How does thishappen?  Well, in the late 1990's Iachieved a major score--or more accurately my agent did--by landing a two-bookdeal with St. Martin's Press.  My firstnovel--THE PORTRAIT--did well and so I set about crafting a follow upbook.  My editor at St. Martin's was RuthCavin--a legend in the field--who at the time was in her early eighties.  I was also working as a geriatric psychiatrist.My thought--write what you know--was todo a mainstream mystery but this time have heroines in their late seventies andearly eighties.  I set the book in afictional Connecticut town that thrives off the systematic fleecing of itsolder residents as they downsize and die. It was a theme I knew well from my day job, and so I constructed adarkly comic mystery where the local antique dealers were getting bumped offone by one.  I finished the manuscript,had a few people read it, did a rewrite or two, then off to my agent whosubmitted it to Ruth at St. Martins...who hated it.  Her rejection letter was scathing.  This was not going to be the second book inthat contract.  And therein lies one ofthe many lessons I've learned--read your contracts carefully.  A multi-book deal does not mean that thepublisher is obliged to print whatever you send.  Ruth did not care for the book, and so it wasnot going to press, at least not then and not with St. Martin's.My then agent, shoppedit around a bit, but clearly I needed to get back to the drawing board and comeup with something to fulfill my contract and so VULTURES AT TWILIGHT--at thetime it was actually named DOILIES UNDER GLASS--landed in a drawer.  To be fully accurate this is more of a shelfthat over the years has taken on the look of a brick wall made out of tightlystacked manuscript boxes with titles of the enclosed, often with dates, writtenon the side in black sharpie.  Timeelapsed I came up with two more books for St. Martin's, which they did publish.  Between books I'd dust of VULTURES ATTWILIGHT, give it a rewrite, send it out, read the rejection letters and thenslide it lovingly back into my wall of unwanted books.At one pointthere was a near hit with a small specialty publishing house--they will gounnamed.  They had a series of professionalreaders review the manuscript, it looked promising.  They held onto VULTURES for eighteen monthsas an exclusive submission, before ultimately rejecting it.  At least here, I could read the critiquesfrom their readers, and came away with the conviction that indeed this book waspublishable.  I gleaned anything of valuefrom the reviews and I re-worked the manuscript yet again.  But with no likely buyers in site the optionswere limited.  Do I self publish?  Or...back onto the shelf?Here, I was a torn.  Self publishing has become increasingly acceptableand affordable.  Yet part of me clings tothe notion that if no one in the "real" publishing world is ready togive it a go, maybe it needs to stay on the shelf.  And while the differences betweenself-publishing and having a publisher bring out a book have become fewer thereare still some big hurdles that the self-published author must consider.  Most notably, how do you get a self-publishedbook reviewed in the bigger publications? Not to mention I really do like that initial advance check.    So VULTURES saton the shelf until I got a call from my agent Al Zuckerman--and any authorshould be so lucky to have an agent like Al. He'd just had lunch with the editor at a gay-themed publishing house,and he'd brought up my name.  He wonderedif I was interested in writing a mystery or thriller series with a gayprotagonist.  Looking back at my wall ofunwanted books, I spotted my very first manuscript--a rambling six-hundred pagestory of a conflicted gay surgeon.  It'spart love story, part action adventure, part mystery, part buddy book and totalmess.  It's quite possibly the worstthing I've ever written.  So I told himI'd think about it, and while I was deep into another project gave it seriousthought.  Which is when it hit me.  What if...What if the two women protagonistsin VULTURES fell in love with another? They were already the best of friends, was it such a leap?  As it stood, the book had no love line andthis made tremendous sense.  Indiscussing it with a gay friend of mine she thought it would work, but I'd needto make them a bit younger--and so I did. It took a solid two months to get a strong rewrite, and what emerged is abook that is a tremendous amount of fun. However....By the time itwas ready to be submitted to the gay-themed publishing house, they'd gonethrough radical restructuring and the editor I'd written this for, had left.  So back to the shelf...or so I thought.  And this is where we get our happy ending, ormaybe a fresh start.  Unbeknownst to me,my agent had forwarded the new gay-themed VULTURES AT TWILIGHT to Severn House,a British independent who's published my last two hard covers.  Sure enough they wanted it, but only as aseries.  If I could commit to at least a secondbook with my two heroines--Lil and Ada--it was a go.  And now VULTURES AT TWILIGHT will be releasedin January 2012 in the U.K. and later this year in the U.S. with the e-versionto follow a few months later.  And themoral of this story, which is old and worth revisiting, persistence does pay,and often in unexpected and wonderful ways.