My worst fears have been confirmed …

I’m not going to share my actual weight reading with you. Me and the scales once laughed together at my battle, but the scales simply sigh once my weight settles and the numbers stop climbing. ‘You know the trouble with fasting for seven days,’ I said to my scales. Yeah I talk a lot to the scales because I feel it helps lighten the moment and I feel a need to make peace with the flat patronizing piece of glass sat on my bathroom floor, just in case it influences its reading. Anyway I said to my scales, the trouble with fasting for seven days is it does make one seriously weak. As I said my scales have stopped with the laughing.

I’m still off the booze, which is cool as proving I can do it makes a right saint out of me, but not drinking makes me feel like the whole world is at a party and I’ve not been invited. Not dissimilar to writing, accept the party going on in my head invites only those people I like and can control. I’ve learnt a long time ago that I don’t need booze for that.

Anyway my dilemma isn’t my diet, drinking or the tub of lard clinging to my midriff, but my story. NO MORE HEROES is finished. Ten years ago, when a roof for my slumbers couldn’t be found, I sheltered in a church from the rain and became trapped by a funeral with one mourner. My instinct was to run, but I couldn’t understand why a man’s death had more pall bearers than mourners, so I stayed. I sung a tune and listened to the vicar and wondered about who might turn up to my funeral. I watched the pretty girl in black wiping away a tear and wondered if there was ever going to be a girl with tear for me.

Yeah, tragic stuff, but it created the germ for NO MORE HEROES and I have arrived at a point where there is nothing I can do that will improve it, but a load of stuff I can do that will damage the work. No commas to insert, or delete according to my editor. Done.

So I should be happy eh? My editor tells me to smile, that the product is good. But I don’t smile and feel overwhelmed really because the path to this particular destination is over and I don’t know how to celebrate my arrival or know the protocol arriving requires.

To seek the blessing of an agent or e-publish.

My vision has always been to self-publish because I like being my own boss. I have been designing a

promotion and marketing package for years and am ready to roll. I have a press release that I believe, given a slow news day, the media will pick up on. I’ve lined up over two hundred bloggers to pitch for reviews and my social platform is growing daily. The cover is stunning, the blurb enticing so why can’t I push print?

Because I want to see my book in hard cardboard with a paper covering and I want to see it next to Jack Reacher’s latest exploit in a window with a serious price tag. I want to hold it and sleep with it at nights. And I want to be loved. Oh yeah, I want an agent to gush and a publisher to gawk and a line of people asking me to sign their book. I want to be smothered with superlatives until I weakly wave them away. ‘Oh stop it.’

I’ve even practiced my signature. I want my moment and I feel dirty.

So this is my problem. It isn’t this silly battle with my weight and worrying my heart is going to tire of pumping blood to feed my adipose tissue. It’s not the drink, but if you’re buying I wouldn’t say no to a beer.

No my problem is my insecurity and my desperation to have an agent love me. And I could possibly trace this back to some instigating trauma in childhood but I can’t. I think it’s just plain boring fear of not being good enough, not feeling confident in my own work to push it on the paying public. And to promote involves a daily grind, constantly seeking out a market and believing when sales are slow or nil that you are worth reading.

So I’m honing a synopsis and polishing the query and reading for hours each day about agents who might care. I need an agent ready to adopt one hard working writer with no previous owners.

Is there anyone out there?

Hello