On 16th April I attended the London Book Fair with a hope to promote my book, maybe speak with agents and publishers, sadly nothing went to plan for several reasons. To be fair I did speak to several lovely people that made the day nicer. However the day still felt marred by the constant closed doors and rudeness of a lot of the companies I spoke to. I came away feeling totally dejected, wondering if it was time to call it a day with writing. After all I’ve put in a lot of effort and expense over several years and felt this to be the pinnacle, which now felt it had got me nowhere.

Since then I’ve talked, watched and listened to some people that have been through exactly the same emotions, had exactly the same thoughts but they had all came through it with the wisdom only hard work and dedication can bring.

A great children’s book artist said that she was humiliated in a queue of illustrators trying to show their work off to a publishing company. The self acclaimed judge thinking that they had a right to be rude to the hopefuls in line, making themselves feel better by telling people they should go back to art school or reducing others to tears. I myself had one company tell me that they wouldn’t even look at my book because they had something very similar already. When I read the synopsis it was only because it mentioned God. Absurdity like that you could never have the same company publishing Hamlet and Cinderella together because they both mention prince’s.

The rudeness of these people did stick with me but then I realised that they are unimaginative, unenlightened pen pushers. Ask them what their biggest contribution to literature, or the world for that matter was and I bet they wouldn’t have an answer. But I’m not going to get angry. For most of these people it’s just a job, probably just another step in their career and most have no real love for the true art. These people aren’t like Brian Epstein that can see something amazing in an original novel because they’re too busy waiting for the bandwagon of whatever is hot at the moment so that they can jump on it. What I've noticed in life is that the people that say no are the people that have never had a dream, the people that have had a dream with give you constructive feedback.

So am I going to give up?

Arnold Schwarzenegger was told that he couldn’t become an actor because he was too big and had a weird accent, look at what he’s accomplished. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple only to start Pixar and then to be employed by Apple again, J.K Rowling was told by several publishing companies that people didn’t want to read about wizards, it wasn’t till an eight year old girl read her novel that she got her break.

These people didn’t give up when the people in the game said no, they kept on because they understood that life is about hard work, persistence and growing. These people were committed to their goal. They didn’t want to lay on their deathbed, look back upon their lives and think what if.

Success is not doing the right thing the first time, it’s about a journey, it’s about taking the hits along the way and learning from these challenges, becoming a stronger and wiser person, learning more about your art and about more yourself.

So no I’m not going to give up, because I believe in my book, there’s nothing out there like it. I believe in the message of love, I believe in the message of being true to yourself and to stand by what you think is the right thing to do when others are telling you no. I believe that I owe it to everyone who reads this book to allow them to get something from it, whether that be a smile from something I’ve written, a laugh from one of the lighter moments, if it makes them think about the people around them at present and cherish that time or people that have passed over and their fond memories, or if it makes them think about their own life so that they’ll take action and change it for the better. I’ll keep going for these people.

Writing the book was the easy part, now it’s time to fight for what you believe in.

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