journeys

Charms Rough, A.C. Out, & A Quandary

Queries for Assassin's have been sent off to all of my first round choices for agents. So far, 7 have returned with rejections. Only one of those disappointed me because I'm pretty much expecting A.C. to end up at a small press. Not because it's not good—I definitely think it is worthy of an agent and a traditional publisher. But it's epic fantasy, and honestly, that's not a genre high on anyone's acquisitions list. I love epic fantasy and hate that it's not being given more attention right now, but being aware of that reality helps keep me from being too upset about the rejections.

Once all my first round agents get back to me, I have another 25 or 26 on my second round list. I'll probably also start hunting around to see if I can add any others. After that, I have half a dozen publishers followed by a list of maybe a dozen or so small presses. Hopefully the book will find a home in all that. Not just any old home either, but a home that's "right".  My job is to not give up on it.

In other news, just finished the Blood Charms rough draft. I need to revise the last 3 chapters and get them posted to the workshop, then I'll be re-outlining the novel to figure out what's missing and how and where to add or cut things. This is a different process for me—usually I'm content with my first outline and just building from there. But this is also a bit of a different genre for me, and I'm still figuring things out.  The outline will also help keep my hands in the book without me actually working on revisions.  I know I need to break for about a month, it's just hard to do—I want to dive in there and get those revisions going. What I need to do is let it rest and percolate a bit between the rough/first draft and my next round of revisions.  Working on world building helps, but it can get...tedious.  I'm hoping the outline will help keep me away from actual revisions for at least a few weeks.  It should help me work on some notes to apply to the next round.

I already know one of my biggest problems is the "blended" setting I'm aiming for.  It definitely fades towards the end of the novel.  Hell, it fades towards the middle of the novel.  So that's something I'm really going to have to think about and work on while I'm letting the actual draft rest.

In the meantime, the question now becomes, do I move Quest of Ehlarayn to a primary project or do I find something unrelated to either the Alden books (or maybe even another Alden book that's in a completely different series, like my 5 book Phoenix series) or the Kayde books?  I have ideas for totally unrelated projects, but I'm not as excited about them as I should be, but neither Assassin's or Charms are sure things, so am equally not sure working on additional related books is a good idea.  Probably shouldn't worry about it too much—Charms has a few rounds of revisions to go before it's no longer the main writing project.  Something will sort itself out by the time I get there.

Never Bored

A.C. is off to agents.  Out of 10 so far, 3 have sent rejections—2 form and 1 that was brief but seemed much more personal. I still have another 15 on the first round of agents to send off to and am planning sending out to about 5 a week until the whole first round list is taken care of.  Then I'll wait until all those are back in before I start working on y second round choices.

In the meantime, I'm working on Blood Charms, my first attempt at something with an urban bent.  I say an urban "bent" because I'm actually playing around with it to blend in another genre.  This will hopefully do two things for me: one, make it easier for me to write since I find the strict urban setting/genre too restrictive for the kinds of stories I like to write, and two, give me something different and more interesting to present to agents when I'm done.  I've been going through and revising my building draft, which is actually the draft before the rough in my usual process, but it's actually working nicely as a rough draft for this particular novel.  At the same time, I'm still in a very flexible space with what I'm doing with it, which is nice.

I'm still working on the second book in the A.C. trilogy on the weekends, but it won't be a priority until/unless A.C. sells.  As much as I love the world setting and my critters want to see the next book, I'm still trying to find that sweet spot for me in a publishing atmosphere that's not as wide open as it once was, especially where epic fantasy is concerned.  A.C. is a beautiful book, and I think it would have a better chance at an agent if epic weren't a genre that now appears to be pretty much on the "outs" in general.  A few things get published, but not a whole lot.  And to keep writing in that series until I see how it does doesn't help me, especially since I have other ideas that might have a better chance.

This is something I'm quite fortunate in right now: I have LOTS of ideas, most with a foundation paragraph written somewhere so I won't forget it.  And writers wanting to be published can't just rest on the finished novel; they have to move on while they shop the finished novel.  Writing is a job.  You don't stop doing it just because one book is done.  You keep doing it.  The process changes a little once you have a contract, from what I gather, but the one thing you always do is write.

I'm enjoying Charms, but still working on my vision of the world and getting to know the characters.  It's much harder when you haven't been working on the novel for years, like I did with A.C. But the NPB process still worked, thank goodness.  As long as I have an idea on my main characters and a plot, it seems to work by me.  I still have some things to work out that might make changes to the book, but it's okay.  There were major changes in A.C. even in mid to late revisions, so I'm not too worried about it.  One thing I will be doing differently is outlining what I have when I'm done with this round so I can see what I need to add and where.  I'm not much used tot he "mystery" aspect of urban fantasy, and I'm hoping the outline will help me figure out how to make it work.

Which actually supports something someone said on a journal entry awhile back: every novel is a different and ends up needing a different process.  NPB may be my foundation, but I'm having to be flexible with it.  The one thing I always need: to know how the novel ends.  Otherwise I stall trying to get there.  A basic road map for the middle helps too, but there's where I have to be ready to change things when I need to.

One thing about writing: as long as you're spreading your wings, it's never boring.  :)

 

Almost There & Other Things

I should hear back today or tonight from my final reader for Assassin's Choice. She's checking to make sure I didn't trim too much, trim in the wrong places, missed places I could trim, and so on. At this point, the manuscript is just under 115k and lost almost 9k from its original final count.  I expect the things my reader wants me to add back in will outweigh anything she says could be cut (I told her to think as if she had to pay for it per word and was on a limited budget, but also to give me reasons for her choices), but I'm hoping not by much.  115k falls in the 100-120k a first time fantasy novelist should aim for, but a number of small presses (which is where I think A.C. has a good chance of ending up if only because epic fantasy is not one of the must haves these days) want closer to 100k. 15k over their word count may be a deal breaker.  I do think too much more would damage the story, but we'll see how it goes with my reader.

Once she gets it back in to me, I'll look over her suggestions and make changes, revise the synopsis according to some comments I've received, and polish up the query letter.  Hopefully I'm looking at it going out to the first round of agents next week.  We'll see since I'm waiting for my query to be looked at by someone who has worked with queries a lot in the past and has a query evaluation she does on her blog. Depending on when she gets to it, A.C. might not be out until the first of August.  But we're almost there.  In a week or two, I'll be querying agents.

As for other things, Blood Charms is moving along nicely.  It's looking like it'll end up somewhere around 65-70k when done, which is better than I expected for the current draft. 10k or so won't be too hard to make up since I tend to run long in the words rather short, whereas I would be concerned if we were looking at 20-25k plus needed in additions.  So far the critters seem to like what I'm doing.  I know next round I really need to look at bringing in more of the setting the way I want and getting more into Randi's head.  I think if I have one weakness (though I'm sure I have more) as a writer, it's that I seem to have a tough time really getting across what's going on inside my MC's head.  It was a problem in A.C. and now it seems to be a bit of a problem for Charms.

Quest isn't getting nearly enough attention at the moment, but that will probably change once A.C. is completely off my plate. One thing I've discovered is that I can work on 2 novels at a time, but not much more than that. I have a novella languishing because I tried to work on 3 major projects at once, and I just can't do it. I've also discovered that those two projects work better if not in the same series because it's very hard for me to keep where the characters are in their growth straight.  I'll also probably never outline and draft all three (or more) novels in a series at once ever again either.  Just too many changes happen when I'm revising to make this a useful way to work for me.  At any rate, Quest is almost 50k in the building draft and remains my weekend project unless A.C. sells.  Then I kinda need to hoof it on Quest because the Alden novels do take quite a bit of time to get done.  Probably not 20 years the way it was for A.C., but I can see 2 years being the minimum I'd need (if I'm lucky, I might be able to get it down to 18 months, but not holding my breath on that) and even that will take a little time to get down to.

So things progress and I'll be hitting a new stage (that of the Querying Author) in short order.  I'm excited about that and am actually very ready to let A.C. go.  I know a few of my writing buddies never thought THAT would happen, but I can say A.C. is done and just about ready to go.  No more readers except, hopefully, agents after this.  :)