My New Book

It took me a long time to accept that maybe I'm writing books that nobody wants. But knowing this and knowing the song and dance that I will face with agents again I do find myself wondering why I do what I do. Not writing mind you, I don't think I could stop if I tried, but publishing or at least, getting the publishing industry to notice. Only one publisher cared about my first book and getting nominated for a couple awards and selling out a couple printings and getting good reviews still resulted in zero, yep, nada offers for paperback rights. I'm not as pissed of by industry indifference as I once was—as I said I've accepted that I write books that they don't want. My problem or rather my question is, why try this again? I sent my new manuscript to one agent already and he passed, saying he didn't like anybody in the book. That's fine I guess. And the man is not an idiot, so I have to allow that he may be right, or that this is just not his kinda book. It's just that the last time I was rejected by over 70 people and the striking thing was that they all said near exactly the same thing. It doesn't matter if they were right or wrong, the didn't have to be. My new book opens with the murder of an attempted rapist and doesn't get very sunny after that. Did I mention that it is set in 1801 and all 550 pages are in 19th century Jamaica slave dialect? Fuuuuuunn. Did you hear that? Yup I heard it too, the sound of agents all whipping out a fresh batch of 'Not For Us" slips. I don't expect to become the toast of publishing and I don't really care. What I'm ambivalent about, what I have real doubts about is what is it driving me to make the attempt. Just a thought.