March is here, and it’s a very exciting month for me. First of all, my calendar tells me there’s a new moon on the 13th. How often does that happen? Never before in my lifetime! What do they do with the old moon? Where do they put it? Is there a buyer who will salvage something from it, or does it just get thrown away?

I sold the first short story I wrote. Then I received over 75 rejections before making another sale. My first four novels were never published. Later, after I’d been selling genre fiction routinely, I wrote a mainstream novel, ALL OTHER MEN. Editors sent me enthusiastic letters about it, said they loved it, but turned it…