Design dilemma -- what would you do?

[knitqueen]

I need to be a bit general, for obvious reasons. I submitted a couple of pattern designs to a certain company in August 2005. They give a time frame within which you are supposed to hear back, whether they accept or do not accept your designs. That deadline came and went, I e-mailed again requesting that the contact me...perhaps they didn't get my original submission, perhaps they were very busy and overloaded with submissions....whatever, I just wanted some communication. That was in late 2005.

Now, here we are, middle of January 2006, MONTHS later, and I still haven't heard from them. I sent a pretty firm 'I NEED to hear from you and don't be expecting any further submissions from me....blah blah blah' type e-mail yesterday and I am half expecting to not hear from them at all. It is very much leaving me in limbo, being unable to submit elsewhere until I hear from them, I can't even say 'forget it' and just hand out my patterns to all of you for free until I hear from them.

What would you do in this type of situation???? I just want to be done with it.