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 The former category is mainly unpublished and self-published authors, while the latter is filled with published authors who are equally smug and self-important.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.