The ones that got away

Every publisher has a short list of books they have either rejected, abandoned, ignored or disliked to find that the next publishers or the fifty-third publishers have taken the books on and done well with them. Is it really true that one publisher turned down Animal Farm because they didn't publish animal stories? No matter, we all do such things. And we all lose writers to other publishers and gain writers from other publishers. Peter Mortimer's Uninvited has popped through the post, nicely produced by newish kids on the north east block, Red Squirrel Press. Five Leaves has published more books by Mortie than any of our other writers, but, after long consideration and some editing we dumped this one, in the end thinking it was not right for our Crime Express list, which we had in mind. Pete did not go out and celebrate, particularly as he'd been writing and rewriting this novella for forty years and hoped it would come out before it reached pension age. It did, but not from us. New writers please note that some books do take forty odd years to find the right publisher. Pete and Five Leaves are still talking. Indeed, we've got a travel book by him planned further down the line. So we are pleased that Red Squirrel has published this clausterphobic story where a man comes home to find an uninvited guest sitting in his chair. He is unable to find out why the man is there, what his motives are or where he came from. It's a good little book and we hope Red Squirrel does well with it. We can add it to our list of books we'd passed over that then went on to do well. Copies are available from http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/uninvited_peter_mortimer_i022068.aspx