Petit singe.

Woke up this morning back in England. All I want to do is wish people bonjour but it just doesn’t have the same impact as it did in Paris. It doesn’t help that I’m home alone. I really wanted to be able to regale my family with the tales of my travels but nobody is about to listen. I might tell the dog, he seemed happy to see me.

Went downstairs to make myself a cafe au lait and found a manilla envelope with my own handwriting on it. It’s my first rejection letter for my novel. It reads as though they don’t think it’s commercial enough, but it’s just a standard response, there’s nothing specific about what I’ve written, they didn’t even bother to print my name, it’s just handwritten. Guess it is just not the right agency for me. I know there are thousands of others out there and that eventually someone will see in Situation One what I see in it, I know it’s a good story, and that it could have a market, just got to find the people who know how to forward that on for me. It’s not a disheartening thing, it’s quite uplifting, it’s just another person to prove wrong, another little obstacle to overcome. I read yesterday (in Patti Smith’s Just Kids) that when you hit a wall the best thing to do is kick it down and that is what I intend to do. I’m in the process of submitting two short stories to Dazed & Confused, I’m working on an article for an online magazine, there’s a Rocliffe New Writing competition for comedy writers coming up, and there are other agents and publishers who might get me.

Until then I’m very happy in the universe I inhabit.