September Update

 

I have nothing exciting to write about this week, but that’s never stopped me before. So here we go. I think I will use this installment to update you on how things stand with The Girl on the Kerb. It was submitted it to the British SF publisher Gollancz in June. I don’t expect to hear back from them until sometime in the first half of 2023. In the meanwhile, I am sending letters to agents to see if they would like to represent this book to publishers.

I sent out 4 email queries on the first of July. To date I have received a rejection email on 27 July and another on 7 Sept. I have not heard from two others, but I think I can write those off as well.

On the 1st of August I sent out four more queries. I have received one form letter email rejection on 13 Sept. with three outstanding.

On the 1st of September I sent out four more. I received one form letter email rejection on 6 Sept, with the other 3 still outstanding.

That’s 4 confirmed rejections, 2 likely, and six still outstanding. I have enough names on my list of agents to keep at this for another 3 months, which will take me to December, after which I will likely call it a day.

However, while I am waiting, I’ve been tinkering with, and hopefully improving the story. Several reviews have mentioned that my ending was too abrupt. This maybe, in part, because I like to keep my endings open for sequels. Life goes on, but now off stage. I, don’t do happily ever after endings.  However, in the case of The Girl on the Kerb, I wanted to keep the story going long enough after the story's McGuffin  – the thing that drives the plot – is resolved in order to make it clear that it is the characters that I care about, not the McGuffin that I use to structure their story. This is true for all my stories. So in tinkering, I added 6,500 words to the last quarter of the book to show that life goes on after the McGuffin that brought the characters together. Though the ending, as always, is still open ended.

Now I’m reading through it yet again on my ebook reader to catch typos and to straighten up all the awkward sentences as I come across them. Hopefully by next week I will be completely comfortable with the story.

In other news: I hope to release The Aerie of a Pirate Prince either next week or the week after. And I have started a new story, Zar Lada, Taef Lang, and the Island of the Slumbering God. That’s my tongue in cheek working title of it. It takes up the story of Taef Lang, Lessie and Sella Rah, and Carz Fel where we left them at the end of The Prisoner of Cimlye. I’ll be happy with a novella. But to be honest, the story is still very vague in my mind, so I can’t guarantee that it will actually see the light of day.

Coming soon!