Rejection, praise, new book?

Hello once again my faithful fistfull of followers!  Once again I shall regale you with...stuff.  Now with justified margins!

Rejection. It's something that everybody who writes has to deal with at some point or another.  Obviously, I'm no exception.  One of the reasons I pursued the whole self publishing route to getting my work out into the world was because I was hoping to avoid rejection.  Working on a book, writing up a query letter, sending it in to Publisher X, and waiting for three months only to have them reply with 'Thank you for submitting.  Unfortunately....' just doesn't seem like a good time to me.  So I've opted out.  What I did do, however, was send a request to Amazon.com to have them consider Words With Fiends for inclusion into the 'Kindle Singles' program.  What are Kindle Singles?  As defined by Amazon: 

 "Kindle Singles is here to offer a vast spectrum of reporting, essays, memoirs, narratives, and short stories presented to educate, entertain, excite, and inform. Our writers take you places you can't get to any other way, on journeys of fact and fiction that share these common threads: they're the highest-quality work we can find, and at a length best suited to the ideas they present."  

What does that mean, exactly?  I have no idea, but I was hopeful that WWF would make it into the program.  As far as I can tell, they put a little bit of their corporate oomph behind these things, putting them in a special section of the site, maybe doing a little advertising to move copies, etc.  I doubt it costs them much of anything.  Long story short, I get what seems to be a form email telling me that 'our editors have reviewed your request and have decided it's right for us'.  I'm paraphrasing of course, but that was the overall feel of it.  I'm sure my short isn't the greatest story ever told but it's getting nothing but positive feedback and it's moving a copy here or there.  I figured with some of their backing it would move even more.  Guess I was wrong.  I've emailed them back asking why.  Not to be a pain in the ass, but just out of curiosity.  You'll know more when I know more, even if you don't want to know more.

Praise.  Now I do that nasty name dropping thing again. Richard Wright, awesome author of dark fiction pieces such as Thy Fearful Symmetry and Cuckoo actually took the time to not only read my story but review it over on GoodReads.  I was flattered.  Moreso, I am ecstatic that he liked it!  Here's a snippet of the review:

"I've never read the author before, but won't hesitate to do so again....The story made me nostalgic for Stephen King's earlier works, and reminds me a lot of his immediately engaging characters, and the slow mashing of a detailed and recognisable real world with things that should not be."

Now that's some high praise.  Moving forward, if nothing I ever do is enjoyed by anybody ever again, I'll look back on Richard Wright's review and think to myself that I actually got something right.

New Book?  Last year, I'd written two 'books'.  The first one is more or less a mess.  The story's there, the characters and plot are in place, it just needs cleaning up.  The second one benefited from a couple of people's eyes on them as well as some changes/small re writes here and there.  I've since resurrected it and have sent it to a couple more beta readers.  One loved it and the other is currently reading it.  When I hear back from her, I may just move forward with putting it out; self published once again, of course.  It's an urban fantasy novel set in Central New Jersey about a ghost whisperer/medium who's hit a bad stretch.  He gets offered a case that promises a big paycheck but it threatens to bring up some issues from his past.  Oh, and he gets in some trouble with the cops along the way.  Depending on what my final beta reader has to say about the plot, etc, etc, it may just be seeing the light of day sooner than I'd anticipated all this time.  Now, I just need a cool name so my cover artists can make me a masterpiece...

Thanks for reading!  Goodreads says I have four fans, so at least I have graduated from three!  Talk at ya's soon!