The Power of Seduction

It took me half the spring, and the entire summer. And now, after Labor Day, I still can't figure out why Client Relations -- five years in the making - garnered sixteen publishers' rejections, a mere five weeks after submission date.

'I just didn't LOVE it,' the most common theme in my rejection letters, didn't provide me with much guidance. But after that many rapid rejections, my agent considered the book unsaleable. So I'm shaking my head and trying to move on. Totally demoralizing. It's tough to get my creative spark reignited, especially when I'm already insecure about my fiction writing skills...

The abuse of power will be the subject of my next book, tentatively titled, 'Book Of Genesis: A Novel. I was inspired to write it by a slew of still unpunished, un-'outed' faculty predators at my own high school, Back In The Day and thereafter.

Their abuses are dispassionately acknowledged by an administrator in her recent (indie-published) tome that chronicles the generally blue-ribbon history of the school, without any apology to traumatized former students. I'm outraged, quite honestly. So I'm creating my story about a lawyer who survived that ordeal herself, when she was a student at a school somewhat akin to my alma mater.

I've outlined the skeleton of my novel, and I'm starting the workshop process all over again. I'm hoping this time, my novel writing will not consume too many years, even if it proves to be equally or even more laborious than Client Relations.

The subject of 'Genesis' is wrenching, and my protagonist is already proving herself a survivor - this, when I'm barely four chapters in.

My workshop buddy and I have already jumped into the fray with each other, over who is seducing whom. My theory is: The seducer/seductress is the one who has more power than his/her partner(s). And emotional power can be just as big a force as physical power.

I'll see how the story develops and where my characters take me. I suspect that my outline will get a little torn as I go along.