I wasn't going to write about this but then thought about why I bought all those silly books on publishing over the years and it was mostly because I didn't know a thing about what to do about becoming a published author. So maybe if I can keep the ongoing saga of the Ak flying book (still known as Flying Cold) out there for other writers to read about then it might help some of you guys and give you a little bit of an idea as to what happens once you write a book.

Today I received my second rejection from an editor, this time from Simon & Schuster. While it's a bummer to get rejected I'm still a bit happy to have gotten to an editor at S&S. I might only be treading water in the deep end of this pool, but at least I'm there and at least I'm getting some positive attention. This letter (forwarded from my lovely agent Michele) had some very positive comments on the book but this one rather pointed complaint:

"That said, I didn’t think the individual characters in her stories were as distinctive as the overall subject matter. "

What's interesting here is that she's right - the Company (and the aviation environment it operates in) is the main character in the book and I wrote it that way on purpose. Where I worked (and at all of the other airlines up there) no one really cared what your personal reasons were for taking the job or keeping it. We knew if a guy's marriage was going south or if he had a sick child or something like that but overall, all that I wanted was to get the flights out on time and move the mail and freight. We had a lot of fun, a lot of conversation but deep meaningful moments? Not so much. And I wanted to carry that over into the book - I wanted it to be clear that the job was that kind of overwhelming and demanding and mean that dominated everything else. It kicked your ass, and didn't care if you got hurt in the process. (We were all replaceable, and we knew it because it was pretty much the job's unofficial theme.)

I did develop a couple of the guys more than the rest - most notably Sam in "Our Missing Airman" which is up at failbetter. But I didn't want this book to be about the guys, I wanted it to be about the Company and the job and now I know I succeeded. And even though that means rejection, it oddly means something good as well.

Now I wait for round three, and a conversation with Michele on the memoir hopefully later this week.