do or die

If you’ve followed along here over the last year or so you know what a struggle it has been to get my contemporary novels into the public eye. I’m not going to rehash all that right now (the posts are at the top of the ‘greatest hits’ list in the right hand column, if you are interested).

After long discussions with my agent and other writers whose opinions I trust, I have decided to invest in hiring an outside publicist who will be organizing the promotion of Pajama Girls. This is not an inexpensive proposition — I will have to spend somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 to have any chance at all of making a significant impact. But if Pajama Girls doesn’t do well — and it won’t, if marketing is handled the way it was for Tied to the Tracks — I’m unlikely to ever get another contract to write a contemporary novel. And I have some contemporaries I’d like to write.

This doesn’t mean I’d stop writing — I still have to hold up my half of the mortgage, after all. I probably could come up with another historical series that would find a home, and I wouldn’t be unhappy about that. The genre has been good to me, and the readers have been spectacular in their enthusiasm and support.But I would be unhappy to be stuck in any cubbyhole.

So I’m going to be working with a publicist, and I’m going to document my experience here on the weblog. Stay tuned.