Excuse the crudity, but we are that tipping point moment where we need to either initiate something, or politely shuffle away into the shadows…

The books have been written, polished as much as a scribe such as I can manage, and now they need either the printer or the shredder!

Hours, untold multiples of hours have been spent expressing our imagination, creating prose, tempting fate and all those associated acts.

And, we have often stated that an unread book is tragically just paper and cryptically arranged ink smudges…

We want to offer our best version of the tale to the world.

If not our best, why are we bothering?

Help is needed, and the available avenues binary.

We can hope for professional assistance via the ‘traditional route’ of an agent and obtaining editing/creative correction as part of that relationship, or we can plough our own furrow and procure the needed attributes ourselves. 

The first option has the smallest outlay, but potentially the least artistic control.

What price artistic integrity?

Option two gives total artistic control (for better or indeed worse), but it also means to achieve such we need to gather our coins together and pay this diligent third party the worth of their hire.

And therein is part of the rub.

Lucre, filthy lucre in all its glory.

Counting coins and ambition are now locked in combat.

To achieve one thing under my own steam I must have piles of little gold coins – and these alas I do not own.

So, we either continue the thus far unsuccessful attempts at attracting a publisher to bankroll my art, or indeed we find a nice pot of gold at the end of the rainbow… 

Pride month it may indeed be, and rainbows aplenty do indeed abound – but associated pots of gold less so.

What to do, what to do?