Now that The Daedalus Incident is out in mass-market paperback — nearly three years after it first launched in trade paperback and became a Library Journal SF/F debut of the month — I’m going to give the wayback machine a spin and talk about how the book was rejected…several times over.
Rejection is an inevitable consequence of seeking publication. A would-be debut author going the traditional publishing route has to first find a literary agent who gets what the author is trying to do and determines that, yes, said author has the chops to pull it off. Then it’s a question of finding an editor at a publishing house who feels the same way.
So yes, The Daedalus Incident was rejected repeatedly. Now, I only queried six agents, five of whom rejected my query letters, before the incomparable Sara Megibow worked with me to whip it into shape. But once that happened, the book then got rejected by several publishing houses before I ended up getting two offers, one of which was from Night Shade Books, my eventual publisher.
I recently went through all the “passes” Sara forwarded to me (thanks to the magic of Google mail), and I was really struck at how few common threads there were. So I thought I’d share some of the feedback I got.
Please note that I’m not doing this out of spite, nor do I have any sort of revenge mentality going on here. I’ve been really fortunate in my career to date. I’m just hoping that folks going through the process of getting published might find this useful. Others may find it interesting to peek behind the curtain to see how things get done. These are all anonymous, and I’m never going to tell anybody who said what. So don’t ask.
Back in college, I was a big fan of White Wolf’s role-playing games. I still think 
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a masterpiece, and I will brook no argument to the contrary. It’s a film that manages to be many things at once: A heart-wrenching romance, a character study, a contemplation of a certain time and place, and an epic, kick-ass Wuxia film. The acting is superb, the directing brilliant, the writing spot-on, the cinematography dynamic and lush, and don’t even get me started on the music.
