moving on . . . moving up?

With the last rejection I recieved, I have exhausted all of the little indie publishers in my area. I'm really sad about this, I was seriously hoping to make it in this little niche market. Something homey and safe. Someplace that would understand my specific cultural needs and expressions.

What is bothering me the most is what is left for me to choose.

The national market.

To be honest it scares me literally out of my boots. Am I good enough? Is my book good enough? While my last rejection said my MS was promising they passed on it. What does that say about me and my writing? The next move for me is to send the Ms out to the few places that still accept unsolicited works and then try to find an agent. There are thousands of them out there, but less then 200 that represent my genre. What if i submit this MS to all of them and no one likes it? Where do I go from there? Do I start another story? Do I even bother?

I have discovered I have a yeller streak a mile wide across my back and it disturbs me. Scared enough that I have literally sat on my polished MS for weeks and not done a thing. The query process is daunting to me and quite confusing. I want to just run and hide. So much for being brave and adventerous.

Yet, I want to see this book series in print its a darn good story if I have any say. I have had a professional Editor look at it and they like it, my readers like it and I have worked darn hard on it. I guess what I am saying is if its worth anything at all I'll just have to get over this streak and do what needs to be done. Inspite of being yeller.

Try your hand . . . pen names

Okay I admit that my reason for this topic is probably going to offend someone.

I don't like my name and havn't since I was a teen. Sorry mom and dad, I just don't like it. Enough to consider a legal name change at one point in time. One of the appeals as a writer has allways been the fact that I could write something and use a pen name. That I could literally be "some one else".

I have played with many pen names through out the years and either kept them for a while and or discarded them when it was time.

I even created a pen name that I ended up liking so much that I eventually used it as a character name. Oh well so much for that one.

So. . . . . I bet you are wondering if I disliked my name so much why my blog, twitter etc. uses my given legal name and why I don't change it.

Well to be honest I'm a chicken and didn't want to offend those two people that gave me my name. Second, I was writing for the LDS market at the time and they don't like the idea of pen names so I established my presence on the internet using my legal name. Besides, I guess it's not such a bad name afterall. :)

My question to you is do you use a pen name or have you considered it? If so, why?

My current distraction

His name is Elias Teancum Porter Jefferies. He was born on Wednesday August 4, at 5:27 pm. Baby is perfect. I am recovering.