Good News and Bad News

Despite the suspense the title to this post might build, I don't have a whole lot to report. I do, however, have a couple pieces of news of both the good and bad varieties. We'll start with the good, since it makes the bad that much worse.

The Good: I've found another person who wants to read my book. He's right in my target audience too and I consider him a friend, but not too close of one that he will be afraid to offend me. I summarized the premise for him and he seems interested. I told him I would make him a copy this morning and bring it in to work tonight.

The Bad: My computer is dead. I know what you're thinking. If my computer is dead how am I typing this entry? I have two computers. My laptop is alive and well. The only problem is I never bothered to back up my book onto the laptop. Don't get too worried. My book isn't gone, never to return. I've backed it up on every single harddrive on my computer (there's 4 FYI), so the manuscript lives on. I just have no way to access it until I get my computer fixed.

That being said I'm fairly certain the problem is the power supply. I won't bore you with the tests I've conducted to diagnose the problem. Just suffice it to say I'm pretty tech savvy and am 80% sure that's the issue. The only problem is I'm a week out from payday (at least) and have no money to acquire the needed component. It's possible one of my readers (likely the guy who was halfway through it last time I talked with him) is finished with their copy and I can redistribute it, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I'll get with my third reader today and ask him to hold on. He's a friend so it won't be an issue.

Speaking of which, I got together with my other reader (the one who hadn't started it yet) and he still hasn't started it. He apologized, though he didn't need to, he just has so much that keeps popping up and he hasn't had any time for things like reading. I ran into his wife later on and she explained that the thing that kept popping up was Diablo III. Honestly, if I'm going to be put on the shelf for another pasttime, I'm fine with it being that one. They're going on vacation next week and he intends to read it on the plane ride.

This probably doesn't need to be said, but no word back yet from the agent.
 

Halfway There

Yesterday I heard from one of my readers. He’s the younger of the two and seemed to be the more excited to read my book. He’s only halfway through it, but he loves it.

We only had a few minutes to talk; I actually caught him at the end of the drive leading to my place of work and we chatted until cars started to line up behind us. I was a little dubious of his opinion, as I wasn’t sure if he was capable of giving me bad news if it was there to give, and when I asked him who his favorite character was he said ‘the main one’.

Still it was a nice little confidence boost, and the way he talked he seemed to understand the plot and characters pretty well. After going inside I found out from a few other people that he had been talking to them about how good my book was. That was all I needed to resolve my doubts. I could see him telling me what I wanted to hear, but he had no reason to spread positive word of mouth, unsolicited no less, if he really didn’t care for it. I’m anxious to have other people read it now, but I don’t want to be that guy who’s pushing his novel on everyone. I’m hoping somebody will ask me for it.

I’ve been looking around on some of the more popular writing support sites on the internet, gathering information on self-publishing and the process. What I’ve found has been quite shocking. There seems to be this great divide between people that think self-publishing is a noble thing and those that consider it the ultimate surrender. The former category is mainly unpublished and self-published authors, while the latter is filled with published authors who are equally smug and self-important. As I’m sure you can imagine, it’s easier to side with the underdogs, they’re the nicer of the two groups.

I’m not giving up on self-publishing. Although, I’ll admit it’s my second choice. I’m waiting, and will continue waiting for quite a while, to hear back from the agent who currently has my manuscript. If that pans out, I’ll be on top of the world. In the meantime I wish she had just sent me a confirmation that she had received my work. I asked for one in the body of the email, but it’s been a week and my inbox is still empty. The general consensus on the aforementioned writing sites is not to expect that confirmation, not even a quick ‘Received.’ that is the norm for important emails I send at work. I’m going to trust them and not prod her. I’m content being patient and passive.

In the meantime my wife has nagged me into starting the second book in the series. Yes, if I didn’t mention it before, my first novel is designed to be the first of many in the same line. I had forgone working on the second book because I was scared to put too many eggs in that basket in case it turned out to be of shoddy construction and instead started another novel. Having received at least one positive review so far I feel a little more confident, and so I began the first chapter.

It was surprisingly easy to fall back into the voice of my character. I’ve only tapped out about 1500 words but I find them delightfully clever.  65,000 more and it’ll be the same length as my first novel. I think I’m going to aim closer to 80,000 for the sequel, though I suppose it will be as long as it needs to be regardless. I already have the story half-decently mapped out, but I know from my first outing that it’s going to change quite significantly.

An Unexpected Development

About a month ago I sent out my last round of query letters. This was before I had resigned myself to the self-publishing route and might even have been the cause of it. I never thought I would get anything back but the usual collection of rejection letters.  As usual, things didn’t go as I had planned.

When I got home from work the other day I found a surprise in my email inbox. One of the agents I had sent my query letter to, along with the first three chapters of my novel, had replied requesting my full manuscript.

I have had agents request chapters based on my query letter before, but none have ever requested the full manuscript based on my chapters. As you can imagine I’m quite ecstatic. I polished up my synopsis (which she requested as well) and sent it and my manuscript back in an attachment.

Now I have three people reading my novel. I can’t wait to hear back from one of them.

Step #3

I left off my lost post hinting about the existence of Step #3. No, this blog isn’t Step #3. Nobody is reading it, and frankly nobody wants to read it as long as I am a miserable failure. This is more for the day that I do become published, and people who enjoy my work want to know more about me.

Step #3, quite simply, is self-publishing.

I know what you’re thinking. Self-publishing isn’t going to make me famous, and I am fully aware of that. Self-published books written by nobodies rarely gather any acclaim. I am sure there are success stories, but they are few and far between.

The key to my plot is that self-publishing isn’t my goal, it’s just Step #3 on a long list of steps. I’m not looking to shoot the moon with this. I only intend to distribute my novel in e-book format. It’s cheap and easy and provides very little risk to my reputation. After all, if I’m no good nobody will ever hear of me right? But if I do well, or at least well enough, I’ve got a valid publishing credit and some experience in publishing. On top of that, my book is designed to be the first of a series, so if it gets any kind of positive reception at all I can give it away for free and use it to gather buzz for the second novel.

That leads up to Step #3a. I can’t rely on agents/editors to read my manuscript now, so I have to turn to people I know. I tried giving my wife chapters as I was writing, and though she tried to be supportive she isn’t much of a reader, and certainly isn’t interested in any of the genres I write. I’m also pretty sure she won’t tell me if my writing is no good. I need people that I can trust, but that don’t have such a large bias/obligation to me.

Every so often I get to talking to people at work about the book I’ve written. Several of them have wanted to read it, but I’ve been hesitant to give it out. I suppose my fear stems from a lack of self-confidence. I’m terrified that my book is horrible and I’m the only one who can’t see it. I fear their judgment, and worse than that, I fear that I have no future as a published author.

I’ve had to put those worries aside. If I’m going to publish on any level I have to face my audience. I have printed out two copies of my book and given them to the more promising requesters. Both seem happy to view it, and both have promised to get back to me quickly.

I have, of course, assured them that I don’t expect them to do me any favors in that respect. I’m sure I’m imposing on them enough and besides, if my writing is horrible I don’t want to know about it any time soon.

In my next post I’ll tell you what they thought, and we’ll go from there.

Book for Sale

Writing is a frustrating business.

I don't say that from experience, of course, at least not from the business standpoint. While I have been writing, one way or another, since I was old enough to hold a pencil and enjoy just the tactile sensation of making marks on paper, I have never made any money doing it.

I intend for that to change. Here and now I make my vow. I will become a published author, no matter what I have to do. I will work hard, I will work long, and in the end somebody, somewhere, will pay money to read what I have written.

This blog will stand as a record of both my accomplishments and my failures in that respect. I can only hope I will have as many of the former as the latter, but I’m a pessimist by nature so I’m fully prepared to tell a cautionary tale, if nothing else.

For the record, I am a novelist, speciailizing in humor and light (contemporary) fantasy. My writing credits are as good as nonexistent; I published a few short stories in an underground newspaper in high school (more than a decade ago) and wrote a good portion of the mailroom operations manual at a former job. I won’t even bother to put those on my resumé.

Getting down to the brass tacks, Step #1 to my goal is the easiest. I must write a novel. Lucky for all of us I have already completed this step. In fact, it’s been done for over a year now.

Step #2 should be to query agents and try and find someone interested in representing me and my manuscript. I’ve done that too, actually. I’ve done it about a hundred times, though I have yet to receive anything back but a letter of rejection.

Now, Step #2 has yielded some unfortunate and very discouraging results. In fact, it’s the reason I had all but given up trying to sell my book. If nobody wants to read it, it has to be no good, right? Maybe, but seeing as 90% of those rejections came from persons who haven’t read a single page of my work, it’s hard to draw that conclusion/ The truth is, all those people are judging me based on my query letter alone, and it’s hard to reconcile that with my novel.

That’s the one thing most people don’t realize when they decide they want to write a book. Once you’re done writing the manuscript, the actual product, there’s a ton of other little things you have to write. In order to be fully prepared to meet an agent’s requests you need, at the bare minimum, a query letter that both sums up your novel in as few words as possible and lists your credentials (if any) as well as your intended market, an outline that shows the story arch of your novel, a synopsis that does the same thing but with a little more meat on its bones and gives away the ending, and finally, an author bio that makes you seem like an interesting person.

Those things all sound easy enough, and some of them are. The synopsis to my book wasn’t too difficult, except where agents had posted somewhat strict size requirements for them. One actually said she wanted as detailed a summary as possible in 300-500 words. That’s ½ to ¾ of a page! The author bio was doable, since it was easy to manufacture unprovable lies, and the outline was really only nerve-wracking due to a lack of standards for formatting it. The real trick was the query letter.

I have about four or five versions of them, all of which seemed perfectly clever until I read them the next day. They were alright, but all fail to capture the spirit of my book. Add to it my lack of credentials and complete lack of understanding for the publishing industry and they all sum up to a whole lot of mediocre query letters. I haven’t given up yet, but I need a way to introduce myself to agents where my writing speaks for me, instead of against me.

So what’s the next step, if finding an agent seems unlikely? I’ll let you wonder for now, as this is shaping up to be a long post. I’ll visit with you soon to explain Step #3.