The
Sweet Revenge of Rejection
You’ve
spent years writing your manuscript. You’ve gone back through,
edited, deleted, changed, made it perfect.
You
send it off to an agent or a publisher. Weeks later, a letter
arrives. Your hand shakes as you open it. You read it so fast, that
you convince yourself you must have read it incorrectly. Surely this
can’t be a rejection letter.
If
you write, chances are you’ve had this happen to you. Getting a
rejection letter after years of work can be crushing.
Ask
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. She was rejected by
a dozen publishers. Only a small London house accepted her work at
the request of the CEO’s 8 year old daughter.
Stephen
King was rejected dozens of times. As was William Golding’s Lord
of the Rings,
John le Carre’s The
Spy Who Came in From the Cold and
Joseph Heller’s Catch
22.
Even
The
Diary of Anne Frank was
rejected 15 times.
If
you are a writer, you will be rejected. It is inevitable. Consider it
a badge of honor. You are in great company!
Radio
listeners in Dallas/Fort Worth may know Mark Louis Rybczyk better as
'Hawkeye,' the long time morning host on heritage country station,
96.3 FM KSCS. An award-winning disc jockey, Mark, along with his
partner Terry Dorsey, have the longest-running morning show in
Dallas. Mark is an avid skier, windsurfer and traveler. He is also
the host of 'Travel With Hawkeye' a radio and television adventure
feature that airs across the country. The Travis Club is the third
book from Mark Louis Rybczyk.
Publisher:
Self Published
Genre:
Mystery
Release
Date: June 17, 2013
In
a cathedral in downtown San Antonio, just a few blocks from the
Alamo, sits the tomb of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and the other Alamo
Defenders. Or so we have been led to believe. What secrets really lie
inside the tomb and what has a group of misguided activists known as
The Travis Club stumbled upon? How far will the city's power brokers
go to protect those secrets?
What
would happen if a group of slackers discovered San Antonio's DaVinci
Code? Find out in the new book by Mark Louis Rybczyk, The Travis
Club.
Excerpt
One Short:
Chapter
1
Noel
Black sharpened a pencil and placed it neatly back in the top drawer
of his glass-topped
desk,
right next to the other sharpened pencils. He glanced at the clock
then straightened a few
paper
clips and a calculator on the stark, polished surface.
11:08
p.m.
He
knew he’d be leaving soon. So important to stay on schedule.
Especially on a night like
tonight,
when a life would come to an end.
Among
the abstract paintings of his office was one unframed black and white
print. A picture
of
her. Not a picture of sentiment, but simply of record. A photo that
would soon belong in a file.
Black
fingered the yellowed photograph and could not help but think of
childhood visits to
his
mother’s father, his abuelo.
He remembered spending the hot San Antonio summers at a
rickety
west-side duplex much different than his parents’ ranch house in
Dallas. Abuelo’s home
was
filled with people, music, food and love.
As
a child, Black would spend summer afternoons within earshot of the
front window,
waiting
for the rumble of his grandfather’s old diesel engine. Then the
home would fill with
other
workers, workers who were grateful to the old lady. All immigrants,
they had left Mexico
hoping
for a better life. The old lady offered them higher wages than the
pecan shellers received.
With
the promise of steady income came the chance to move into a house
with plumbing, to send money
home, and to send for other relatives. His grandfather loved the old
lady and he did too.
More
recently, Noel Black’s feelings about her had changed. She was a
relic, an icon of a
past
era. Now in her final years of the 20th century, the old lady had
outlived her usefulness and
had
no place in the modern San Antonio that he envisioned. She was in his
way. She needed to be
eliminated.
Of
course, this kind of work had to be contracted out. He usually relied
on a local contact
who
understood the procedures. Anytime a life was extinguished, it must
be done with precision in
Noel Black’s world.
