A. Christopher Drown - A Mage of None Magic Book One The Heart of the Sisters Guest Post ~ Bee's Knees Reviews

Today we are lucky to be apart of the A. Christopher Drown blog tour Welcome welcome, we are lucky to have A. Christopher here with us for a guest post and here he is.

You've heard it before. A hundred times. A thousand times.

It’s the track that almost didn't make the album that ends up with the Grammy. It’s the actress who’d been passed over but then given one last look who takes home the Oscar. It’s the animal adopted only hours from being put down that wakes the family in the middle of the night and saves everyone from the fire. It’s the idea just about everyone dismissed as crazy that ends up taking the world by storm.

For writers, amateur and established alike, the lesson there is that it takes just one person to say yes. Just one person who’s willing to accept a little risk on your behalf is often all that lies between you and your deserved triumph. Which is why the task that’s even more arduous than all the long days and late nights of writing, editing, and changing is simply not to give up until you find that one person who recognizes your work for the worthy, wonderful thing it is.

Someone told me early on that if you’re not receiving a steady supply of rejection letters, then you’re not doing it right. You’re not really trying to break through as a writer. Because everyone gets rejected, repeatedly and mercilessly. But that’s the game. That’s the lottery you can’t win if you don’t play. And as you persist in sending submission after submission, take comfort in the impressive company of rebuffed authors you’re keeping:

Stephen King’s "Carrie" received dozens of rejections before finally selling—but only because his wife found the manuscript in the trash and insisted he try one more time. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding was turned down twenty times. One publisher who read Anne Frank’s diary found it scarcely worth reading because it didn’t “have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.” John Grisham’s A Time to Kill had to make its way through a dozen publishers and sixteen agents before seeing the light of day. Dune received twenty-three rejections. Publishers dismissed Watership Down repeatedly because no one thought children would understand its prose. A Wrinkle in Time has twenty-six rejection letters under its belt. Gone with the Wind has that beat with thirty-eight. A publisher thought the collective verdict of H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds would be, “Oh, don’t read that horrid book.” Even Chicken Soup of the Soul, which went on to sell a metric-gazillion of copies, let alone its infinite list of follow-ups, was turned down more than one hundred times. And the first book of the Harry Potter series was rejected by nearly every publisher in the U.K. before going on to make J.K. Rowling literally richer than the Queen of England.

If you believe in your work, if you can look in the mirror and say wholeheartedly what you’re submitting is the cleanest, tightest, absolute best you can possibly make it, then keep going. Don’t stop. Send it out again. And again. And again. Don’t dare let those interested in merely capitalizing on what’s safe—on what others have heard before a hundred times; a thousand times—decide whether your writing is worth being read by the world. Search for that one person who’ll believe right along with you. That person’s out there. Right now.

So find them. Join that vast fraternity of writers who were told over and over they weren't good enough, that they had nothing to offer readers, so that you, like them, can look back afterward through crammed shoeboxes of rejection letters and have that sweet last laugh you worked so hard to earn.

About the Author: A. Christopher Drown is a native of Brunswick, Maine, who currently resides in Memphis. His work has appeared in several magazines and anthologies. The first edition of A Mage of None Magic won the 2010 Darrell Award for Best Novel. His story, Path of an Arrow, received the 2012 Darrell Award for Best Novella. He recently completed his second novel and is at work on The Book of Sediahm, the next book in the Heart of the Sisters series. An award-winning graphic designer, when not slogging away at his trusty Macbook, Pedro, he can be found hiding around a nearby corner waiting to leap out at either of his unsuspecting children.

Book Synopsis A Mage of None Magic: Myth tells that magic came to be when the fabled gem known as the Heart of the Sisters was shattered by evil gods. The same tale speaks of the Heart being healed one day, unleashing a power that will bring the end of humankind.

While traveling to begin his magical studies, young apprentice Niel finds himself suddenly at the center of the Heart's terrifying legend. Caught in a whirlwind of events that fractures the foundation of everything he's believed, Niel learns his role in the world may be far more important than he ever could have imagined--or ever would have wished.

A Mage of None Magic begins an extraordinary adventure into a perilous land where autocratic magicians manipulate an idle aristocracy, where common academia struggles for acceptance, and where after ages of disregard myth and legend refuse to be ignored any longer.