I'm stuck in the "there but for the grace of dog" mindset when i read about these scammers.

A) You're not a hack. Stop that now, please.

B) I feel sorry for a lot of them. But I feel sorrier for, say, senior citizens who get scammed out of their social security. Like Barb says, you need to do your homework before you enter into any kind of a business agreement, especially when you're paying for services.

Eh. It'll never go away. Years o' therapy yada yada.

Reading through threads of people who got scammed, a lot of it seems like earnest fools. It's never those pretentious assholes who rail at agents and editors who are of course just too thick to understand pure genius! You know, the dicks who have been polishing their 200,000 word Great American Novel for twenty years, are too important to adhere to submission guidelines, and then send hatemail to agencies for ignoring their stream-of-consciousness-style tome about a basement dweller who saves all of human kind with his super-sperm, or something? That guy. That guy never loses thousands to these asshats.

There's no justice.

Ah, you mean Cliff Burns.

Is that the dude Connie Neil pointed out awhile back?

Yep-- the one who completely went off on the publishing industry for not recognizing his genius.

I haven't done extensive reading or researching about getting an agent, but a fee like that would send my red flag meter off the chart. Some of that may be natural paranoia though.

Reading about getting published just drives me nuts. Every time I read something it makes it sound like it's impossible. Then I read writing tips, open up a nearby fantasy novel and often these two things do not match. I think this is why I just tell myself to not do much research and just revise. I use the tips that sound right, but don't worry about following everything. Maybe one day I'll just record myself reading it and have my own podcast, who knows. I've enjoyed putting it together so I don't feel especially do or die about getting published.

Anyhow, I'm definitely in a low confidence phase. But I have to remember, this is not the last revision and for that matter very few words that existed in my rough draft have made it into this revision. To a large extent this is still a pretty rough draft. I think my writing is too thin, but I have to balance that vs. word count. Also, I think I have too many weak sentences, but it's not as bad as the original draft.

Now that the kids are in bed. I'm going to have Audrey read chapter four to me and see if I can sharpen it up. Audrey is the voice I'm using for text to speech. I've really taken to have my computer read me the chapter and pausing it where I want to make changes. Maybe a bit of a weird approach.

Meh. Everything I've read in forums dedicated to children's lit is that TALKING ANIMALS ARE NOT WANTED.

Nothing I can do about it now, but hope that my talking animal is charming enough to break through. If not, I'll get good and drunk, have a nice cry, and move on to the next thing.

Everything I've read in forums dedicated to children's lit is that TALKING ANIMALS ARE NOT WANTED.

I'd like to say they don't know what they are talking about, but I don't know the first thing about children's lit. I mean aside from having children who read. Sam sounds charming from the bits and pieces I've gleaned on Buffista thread reading.

Incidentally, Jeff Harmon often lists scam publishers as legit. And he has all sorts of weasel words in his advice that might steer people towards vanity publishers. You know how self-publishing is a legitimate option if you are willing to do the marketing and so on... And of course it is legitimate for cookbooks, and stuff of interest to one family or one small social group. But some people won't take it like that when read in a Jeff Harmon book. Actually Harmon strikes me as pretty sleazy.