The Birthright was the first novel I actually finished. I pitched an idea about a family of occultists to a now-defunct serial-subscription website called keepitcoming.net five or six years ago; I actually didn’t have anything written, but I figured that if my story was accepted, the site’s weekly deadlines would force me to keep moving along.

And they did. I finished the story, which attracted a few dozen readers and eventually earned me something like a hundred bucks in royalties, and then went about revising the serial chapters into a novel. It wasn’t a great book, but it was my first completed novel-length manuscript, and I loved it, warts and all. There were actually some ideas and scenes in it that I thought were really cool (like when the bad guys peeled their victims, or when one character communicated to another through the vibrations of a certain sex toy).

My pitches didn’t really go anywhere, and I was kind of glad to move on to other, better – or at least more well-organized or thought-out – projects, but I kept tossing The Birthright at first-novel competitions and publishing cattle calls in the meantime while I worked on new stuff.

Last night I got a rejection from the last contest in which I entered it. I wasn’t too surprised or anything, but it definitely seemed like a sign that it was time to put it behind me for good, stick it in the trunk and move onward and upward, yadda yadda yadda. I’m a little bummed about it, as are, I suppose, all fiction writers whose first “real book” doesn’t set the world on fire. But just finishing it was a personal triumph, and really, why would I want to go on pitching something I know isn’t my best work now that I’ve got better stuff out, and better stuff on the way? I can always dig it out from time to time to enjoy what I got right and laugh at what I got wrong.

So, goodbye, The Birthright. Thanks for all the great feelings you inspired during your creation and upon your completion. You were the evidence that proved to me that I could do this.