But I had (and still have) confidence in Mike Gregory and after months of rejection and the associated sulking I managed to find an agent prepared to take a chance on me. He liked Folmer, he said, and felt that it was as good as any of its genre and certainly worthy of publication. So off it went to sixteen publishers and within a few weeks we had sixteen rejection slips and the bottom line was, without any doubt whatsoever, that no one was going to take a chance of a first time author. Two or three said the book was “well written” and others said they liked it which was encouraging, but it was still “no thanks”.

AUTHORHOUSE.

In the meantime, I had sent a copy to the self-publishers Authorhouse. This fell into the lap of an extremely helpful and kind lady named Elizabeth Darling (now moved on) who said she enjoyed the book immensely and that it had “scared her half to death”. Aha, I hear you saying: she would say that, wouldn’t she – Authorhouse want your business. Well, possibly….

The literature I got from AH was comprehensive and very quickly I came to know two things: first that my PC skills and understanding would never go as far as was required to deal with page layouts and the various other complicated (to me) aspects of formatting, and (money, again) I realised that the royalty per book sold would mean that sales would need to be fairly brisk to get a return on the money I would need to invest. Still, they seemed genuine enough and were probably the best of those I had looked at.

At that point I was dithering but in reality it was time to bite the bullet – put up or shut up. Both James Morton and my new-found agent were of the same opinion: either I take a chance, pay AH their fee and see what happens, or forget about ever writing another word. It all came down to whether I had confidence in Folmer, they said: and, of course, I have. My agent agreed to handle all of the AH negotiation for me and the whole thing was relatively painless. A lot of reading and checking of galleys, discussions about marketing and price etc., and as it stands to date (12 May 2007) Folmer should be available on Amazon and through other outlets within a few weeks. Hopefully I have got some reviews lined up and, as they say, all my friends will buy it.......!