Welcome, Amy McCorkle

When deciding what to write about on Miss Ginger’s blog I got an email in my box. It’s the kind of email every writer dreads/anticipates. It’s the all important answer to the query letter you sent out weeks or months ago depending on how swamped the publisher is with submissions at that time. And your day can be made or broken these four little words we accept/we reject. And sometimes there’s that nasty little revise and resubmit clause.

There are some publishers who are better at it than others. And in the age of the e-reader there is a bigger chance for us all to be accepted but there is also the same challenge of having our best foot forward. Quality over quantity and finding that all important balance that will keep you from going insane while waiting for the ANSWER you so desperately desire.

I’m thirty-six years old and I’ve been writing since I was five years old. Does that make me an expert no, it does, however, qualify me to answer a few questions. Does it get any easier? That depends on what you mean by easier. If you mean your craft gets better, and it increases your odds of finding a home for your work, well then yes it does. If you mean does it guarantee publication, well of course it doesn’t.

I’m not trying to discourage you. I wrote for twenty-five years before being offered a legitimate contract from a legitimate house. For some people it’s not as long, for others it’s even longer. But there are two things I know for sure, you have to believe with everything that’s in you that it’s going to happen. Because if you don’t no one else will. Need someone to hold your hand and tell you everything’s going to be alright? I’m probably not the person you want to talk to because I like to be happy. And when you’ve worked your butt off as I have and had the nerve to submit and receive more rejections than accepts yeah I’m thinking I don’t want anyone to spoil my good mood. But here’s the thing I always believed it was going to happen because I never stopped writing.

That’s the second thing. You have to write. You have to produce. You have to submit to ever have a shot. You may choose to self-publish, that’s perfectly legitimate too. I just wanted something different.

So I’m proud to announce the release of my second book, Another Way To Die through MuseItUp Publishing. The following is an excerpt.

Excerpt:

I felt his hand tapping on my face and heard his voice coming from what seemed like a million miles away. “Almira. Almira, wake up.”

My eyes slid open for a moment and I saw him as he was. Older, stronger, maybe crazier for helping me now than he had been then. My eyes drifted closed. I was back in the past with him carrying me out of my father’s estate and into his waiting car. I was so doped up on pills and heroin at the time I couldn’t think beyond ‘help me get out of here.’

Then Daniel’s voice called again, this time from the present day. “Don’t you dare die on me! Not now. Not after all of this.”

My eyes opened again, and he was standing over me. I managed to scan the room and saw a beautiful woman preparing to work on me.

“If you fail her, I’ll come looking for you.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Danny. You know I do good work. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have called me in on this.”

I gazed up at Daniel and said raggedly, “Yeah, Daniel, don’t be so dramatic.”

His head jerked downward and he took my hand; images of our brief time together flooded me: him carrying me… throwing me in the shower... of us naked in the shower, making love. Suddenly I felt hot all over—well, as hot as can be under the circumstances.

“Daniel, don’t go…” I murmured. Daniel let go and pulled up a chair, lighting a cigarette.

“I’m giving you something for the pain but it’s still going to hurt. Put that out,” Jasmine said as she worked over me, digging out the bullets; the pain was mind numbing. Tears rolled down my cheeks as he took my hand again and I crushed it.

With each dig into my body to retrieve those goddamn bullets, memories flooded my head. The night Daniel and I spent together surfaced. Suddenly I felt at peace…

“I’m losing her, Daniel.” Jasmine’s voice sounded like a faint echo.

“Stay with me, kiddo, stay with me.”

I opened my eyes but I wasn’t in the present. I was in another time, another place. I felt hands pressing down on my chest. Air rushed down into my lungs.

“Save her damn it!” Danny’s voice was so like it had been all those years ago.

I could see us that night as we made love. Hear his voice. “You don’t know what kind of man I am,” he’d said.

I’d known exactly what kind of man he was then.

His mouth captured mine. His air breathed life into me, desperately pulling me back from the brink.

I opened my eyes, coughing and sucking in air as he held onto my face, his gaze burning into me, reminding me of why I had slept with him in the first place. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said. “Do you understand me?”

“Is she gone?”

He looked up toward Jasmine. “No.”

“Then get her the hell out of here because I don’t trust her.”

“Ungrateful bitch.”

Daniel leaned back. Before he could stop me, my hand shot up and I nailed her in the mouth with a hard sucker punch.

“Crazy—”

Daniel stood up. “I suggest you choose your next words very carefully,” he warned her.

My eyes slid shut. I heard a door slam, and before I lost consciousness completely, I heard a faint whisper. “This time I refuse to let you go.”

About the Author:

Born and raised in the Bluegrass State of Kentucky, Amy roots for her Wildcats and spends her time trolling bookshops and movie theaters.

https://www.amazon.com/author/amymccorkle