March 22, 2009 - A New Beginning

I have decided to fire up the blog once again. I intend to use in several ways; one way, to get the creative juices flowing for writing; to track my progress in trying to find an agent, or a publisher, for my first book. This could be a trip to Happy Land, or, perhaps one to the dump. We'll see, I guess.

My first book, "The Girl Who Lived In Colours" is currently a little over 93,000 words. When it was first written, or the draft completed, it was around 150,000 words. I made several passes through the work attempting to tighten it up, make the beginning move a little quicker, and, following the advice of the first agent who kindly responded, drop the word count to between 80,000 and 98,000 words, Publishers are not excited about spending a lot of money printing big books for unknown writers, unless of course, you know someone who has an in at the publisher, and who will vouch for you. 

Anyway, that said, progress to date:

Query letters sent out: approximately 20

Rejects so far: 12 - BUT, one of those gave me some excellent feedback corresponding via e-mail with me one Saturday afternoon. She responded to my query within a half hour. When the book is published, I am sending her a "Thank you" copy, autographed, of course. (Look, I'm trying to be positive with this!) Several have said that from the query it sounded intriguing, 5 have requested chapters and summary. The ones that I have sent additional data to have indicated that there will be someone out there who decides they can be passionate about selling this, and not to give up. Little do they know I am determined to give up. 

I currently have two agents reviewing requested info, one wanting to see just the first chapter, the other requesting a summary and the first 75 pages. 

I still have about 80 agents to query. After that, if no luck, then it's on to the publishers! I expect to begin hitting the publishers by July 1 if that's what I need to do. 

In the meantime, I will be spending my time working on the sequel by reading 15 or 20 books for research purposes, developing plot lines, and creating a believable characters. Several of the characters from the first book will be carried over into the sequel,and new characters added. 

I will also track progress in getting back into painting, both in watercolour and pastels. If I do anything worth the merit, I will post pictures of same on this blog. 

Later on, I will log our adventures when we head up to Maine in about a month, and then west come late August. We are going to drive, take our time, and stop whenever we feel like it. Hopefully this will lead to another ton of photos we can use as subject matter for out art (my wife paints in oils), and perhaps some interesting things I can report on along the way.