Here is how I finished the new novel I mentioned in my last blog: I wrote the first sentence of it on 11/6/14 and the last sentence on 2/14/15, averaging 750 words a day, seven days a week. Writing the last sentence didn't mean the end of work, however. I printed out review copies for my wife, Rennie, and a handful of reader/friends. Then I let it sit unread for about two months while those early readers did their reading (and one of them actually spent six weeks reading it). Then I set about rereading, editing, and rewriting the thing. In the end it came to 67,000 words (four thousand longer than Ishmael).

One of my advance readers wrote: "Coming out of my bedroom I'm holding my breath and clutching the manuscript to my chest. Unable to utter a word, tears streaming down my face, I walk to the sofa and stand in front of my daughter. She looks up at me and says "you finished the book?, was it that touching?" I nod yes, several times, simply unable to utter a sound. I come into the kitchen, sit down and here I am typing to you. What can I say, you're gonna be the death of me!!!!! My heart can hardly take this. I read every page, I read every word, saw every punctuation mark."

What author wouldn't treasure a response like that!

Just before beginning work on this blog, sent it off to my agent. Twenty years ago a manuscript from me would have been sold immediately with a substantial advance, but the name Daniel Quinn is not now worth as much as it was then. In fact, because the books that came after Ishmael did not make nearly as much money, I became what is known in the trade as a midlist author. To put it in horse-racing terms, my track record was not very good. I'd had one great winner in my early career, but my later books were now running well back in the pack. This explains why no one wanted to publish After Dachau. That book and The Holy were published by the start-up press Context Books and later republished by Steerforth Press when Context failed.

Publishers in general (meaning ordinary rather than scholarly publishers) must make money to stay in business. Thus they definitely do not subscribe to the motto ars gratia artis ("art for art's sake"). What this means is that publishers are actually more open to publishing unknown authors with no track record at all than midlist authors with a poor or middling track record. It's for this reason that my new novel will go out to publishers authored not by midlist author Daniel Quinn but by an author with a name they've never seen before; it will thus be reviewed by unbiased readers.

I consider it the best of all my novels (not counting those of the Ishmael trilogy, which belong to an entirely different category). We'll see.

Meanwhile, now that this blog is done, I'll feel free to begin work on my next. Ten years ago I was convinced I had nothing more to write.