To my great surprise, twenty-five days after writing the first words, I crossed the 50,000 threshold in my NaNoWriMo story. This morning I validated the novel and it clocked in at just a shade over 51k. It was written quickly and it shows. The plot is rushed, the characterization is so so, and there are residual references to dropped plot threads or last minute changes in events or descriptions, but it is a complete story written from scratch in a month. I genuinely didn’t think I could do it. Now, I’d like to say that you good folks will be reading it soon, but that remains to be seen. For one, I’m going to be reading over it a few times to add in missing pieces, catch errors, and tie up threads. On top of that, though, there’s the other big piece of news I have to share.
Frequent blog readers will know that a while ago I received a message from a literary agency expressing interest in taking me on as a client. I eventually got matched up with someone and we began working with one another. Due to the fact that we never formalized our agreement, I always referred to her as “my kinda sorta agent.” She gave me a lot of really useful advice, and she was even a big part of the decision to tackle NaNoWriMo, since she was enthusiastic about my silly superhero idea and thought it would be a good project to submit for consideration to publishing houses. Well, the other day she asked to set up a phone call. On the call, she informed me she was taking a new position in a different company and would no longer be an agent. This meant I would no longer have a kinda sorta agent. HOWEVER! Upon contacting the guy who initially got in touch with me, I was informed that they are indeed still interested. To make a final decision about whether they’d offer me representation, though, they would need to look at my ‘new’ novel. Now a long time ago I made the decision that I didn’t want the current string of deacon books to be professionally published unless I knew that they could either be kept inexpensive and DRM-free or improved vastly enough to warrant a higher price and tighter lock down. Thus, I would not be sharing any of the self-published Deacon books or Lain Origin (which isn’t really near enough to completion to be shared anyway). However, I DID just finish NaNoWriMo, so I sent that story along with the disclaimer that I wrote it in a single month and hadn’t smoothed out the rough edges yet. I also sent out a perpetually on hold Post-Jade continuation of the Book of Deacon series. I’ll wait until they give me a response before I move forward with either of those stories. If they say, “This superhero story is utter drivel! We hate it!” then I’ll self-publish it like the rest. If they say “We think this superhero story has potential. We’ll fish it around and see who bites.” then it’ll go through that whole meat grinder before showing up. As always, I’ll keep you informed. As for the mysterious Deacon book, I’ve begun assembling a small list of supplementary beta readers to give it a look over. There’s an element of the second half of the story that I am quite sure should be changed, but my usual brain trust is pretty well split on the matter, so I need some tie breakers.
On the plus side, it means I can finally get back on track with Lain Origin! I’m hoping that the month-long hiatus will help me power through a few sticking points that had slowed me to a crawl. It turns out that Lain’s history, as established by the brief glimpses we are given in the trilogy, has a timeline that is a touch difficult to reconcile in a way that makes for good reading. I’ll keep at it.
Finally, I was contacted by Claudette (of editing fame) and informed that she’d received an email from a free audio book website. The email vaguely implied that A: I had a free audio book (or any audio book, for that matter) and B: I had somehow sanctioned or endorsed the website. Neither is currently true. I’m not saying the site or the person sending it is fishy, I’m just saying if you receive a similar email, be mindful that I’m not affiliated.
That’s about it for now. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply to the post. Until then, thanks for reading!