Too

So I wrote a book. Not a book, actually, a bunch of pieces pre-blog. Didn't get very far with it, but now looking back, am surprised I even got one single publisher to consider it (before rejecting it). Wrote another book. This time landed me an agent. Love her. She loves me. She loved the book, and away we went - sure I was headed straight to Oprah's yellow couch and the New York Times Bestseller list.

Not so much.

Wrote another book - third time's the charm, right?

Agent went to town again. Lots of nice feedback. Loved the book. Loved me. Loved Rojo. Loved our story. Too spiritual. We exhausted mainstream presses and went to Plan B - spiritual imprints. Too Catholic for the Protestants. Too Christian for the Buddhists. Too something for everyone. Got so far as to have one editor love it, take it to he "pub board" and really fight for it, but in the end, it was just "too" for them.

Here's the deal. If I had written a work of fiction (and we considered at one point fictionalizing this), I could keep reinventing the story to be less "too" and more whatever it is that we thought might sell. But this is a true story. It's our story. To the best of my knowledge, ability and integrity, the story happened exactly as I write about it. There isn't a lot of wiggle room and I don't want to turn it inside out to make it anything other that what it is - a book of love.

After much soul searching we (my agent and I) have decided to self-publish it. She is going to help me, because she is that awesome, and believes in the story that much. I have lost all hopes and desires of being famous. I have dropped expectations that everyone I know will read it, help promote it, and it will   sell enough copies to ever recoup what I've put into it. I do, however, want to finish what I started, and put it out there for whomever "needs" to read it. When it's ready to go, you'll be the first to know.