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| Author - Peter May | ||||||||||
 Peter May |
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Major French Literary Award for Author Peter May Rejection Finally it drops onto the doormat one morning, the familiar publishers logo loud on the dun coloured envelope. With a rush of adrenalin, you grab it, take it to the kitchen table and… just stare at it for a beat. With rising anticipation you tear the envelope open and then… even as you unfold the letter, you realise with a plunging, heart sinking sensation, that there aren't enough words to spell success. You've failed and the scant two lines are stark proof that, again, you are being thanked for submitting your cherished manuscript, but, "on this occasion" an option would not be taken to publish. Dreams of fame and fortune dashed. It takes weeks to get over the feeling of failure and you cannot bear to even touch the, now despised, manuscript to try to figure out why your much crafted, much slaved over, much loved story would not, after all stare down at the smug you, from the Best Seller shelves of WH Smith. Everyone (except perhaps Shakespeare and J.K. Rowling), who has ever believed that old maxim that "everyone has at least one book in them" and has acted upon it, probably knows that feeling of rejection. It is part of the rights of passage of becoming a published writer. At least, that is what established writers always say. Except, perhaps, Peter May.
May was devastated and dumped his seemingly despised never to be published book in a drawer, where it languished (not forgotten - oh no) for five long years, whilst he forced himself to concentrate on other work for his American and French publishers.
It was only because of a throwaway remark to his French publisher, about how "the best book I had ever written" had been rejected by UK publishers and his US agent, that led to him dusting off his manuscript for her to read. His astute French publishers snapped up the world rights to the "The Blackhouse" … a highly unusual scenario, of a book written in English, being first published in French! The rest, as they say, is history, with the 'British Publisher of the Year', Quercus (The Millenium Trilogy, Stigg Larsson), encouraging May to take the theme and run with it, turning it too, into a trilogy. So next time you try and fail to get your book published, don't stop trying. After all, rejection can and does happen to the best as well.
"The Blackhouse" entered the UK hardback top twenty
at the beginning of 2011 and on publication as a paperback in
September, it immediately entered the UK paperback charts, where
it remains as we go to press. The second in the trilogy, "The
Lewis Man" is now published in hardback: The
Lewis Man (Part 2 of the Lewis Trilogy)
In a decision taken by 3551 jurors from all walks of life all over France, the Scotsman beat off competition from a shortlist of ten European authors to lift the French national book award, the 2011 CEZAM Prix Litteraire Inter-CE
Story: Chris
McCready
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Peter May - Bio
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| To pop-up a short biography of author, Peter May, please click the image above. |
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Related Stories
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Peter May explains how "The Blackhouse" might be languishing in a drawer still, had it not been for an editor who believed in him, a publishing house that broke all the rules to support him, and a French public who have adopted this Scotsman and rewarded him with praise and literary prizes... Stung and depressed after his novel's rejection, only to be elated
by its subsequent success, Peter May shares his thoughts with
us via this video Full Story - click the image above |
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Scenes of the Isle of Lewis, setting for The Lewis Trilogy, by Peter May, overlayed on the haunting melodies of Capercaille. Full Story - click the image above |
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Other Book Stories
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A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley. The Aveyron Book Group review this Pullitzer Prize Winning book. Full Story - click the image above |
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Little Black Book of Stories, by A.S. Byatt. Review, by the Aveyron Book Group Full Story - click the image above |
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer. Review, by the Aveyron Book Group Full Story - click the image above |
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Blindness by Jose Saramago. Nine members met mid-May to discuss this book. There were a wide variety of comments from three members who actively hated the book, to two who thought it was a work of genius. Full Story - click the image above |
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If you really loved it... you'd let it go. The book you have just read, that is... Full Story - click the image above |
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