Happy Father’s day out there! We had a pretty quiet day here, because my kids are out of town on vacation and his live out of town. I enjoyed a lovely time out on my screen deck reading and playing hooky from MILLY. More about my reading material in a subsequent blog.

I also read the arts section of my Sunday newspaper. In it, several bestselling suspense authors were bemoaning the fact that they were under heavy pressure from their publishers to produce a blockbuster a year.  It’s been my experience that in the realm of achievement, someone always wants the problems that come with your level of success. As a midlist author, I think I would love to have the “problem” that my publisher expects to make a bestseller out of my one book a year. So far I’ve never missed a deadline, thank you God. But as a midlist author I can’t expect to reap the six- or even seven-figure advances that these stars make. So I, like most midlist authors, must work outside writing. (I’m not counting those who are fortunate enough to have spouses that earn a princely income and need not work to support the family). I think I could produce at least two books a year. I have done so, in fact, but in the past, at least, I have not reliably sold two manuscripts in a year. There are no guarantees in writing, but midlist writers have much more uncertainty.

I was proud to note there were no romance authors quoted among the moaners. Many romance authors are used to producing two, three and four books a year, depending on the length (and on how many manuscripts they had already completed under the bed when they first sold, that just needed a little tweaking. )

But yeah, the grass is always greener on the other side. When I’m in deadline or revision hell, I try not to whine too much among my writer friends who are not yet published, because they think they’d love to have my problems. Probably those who are very close to being published–who have won contests, and just need to submit one more manuscript to get that first sale, try not to kvetch too much around their aspiring writer friends who are still trying to master point of view and avoid head-hopping, and they zip their lips around those of their would-be author friends who never will master spelling and grammar. Me, I envy my fellow romance authors who have won Rita nominations, but most of them, I think, don’t waste time moaning that they didn’t win. There’s always someone out there to envy, but life’s too short to waste one’s time that way. What do you think? Comments,  please!

Blessings, Laurie Kingery