Its been an interesting month for me writing wise. You may remember that in my last works in progress update I had actually pulled ahead of schedule on Roc Rider. That state of affairs didn’t last long as I am now slightly behind. Only slightly though, thankfully, and I still have every confidence of finishing revisions on schedule.
What schedule is that, you may be wondering. I had planned to be half-way done with revisions by tomorrow, which won’t happen. I plan on having the revisions done and be ready to move on to editing by the end of April. Editing I plan to complete before the end of July to take advantage of an interesting opportunity that’s come across.
A fellow Wyoming fantasy writer and I met a couple months back when she did a signing at my library and we’ve been talking over Facebook. She read Roc Rider and enjoyed it, so I asked if I could use her name in querying her publisher on the book and she agreed. This publisher requires all submissions to be in by the end of July.
This turn of events likely comes as a surprise to those who have been following the blog for a while, as I intended from the start for Roc Rider to be an independent title. Roc Rider is too short to be considered a full-length novel and almost no publishers accept novellas or other shorter works unless they’re from an author they already publish. Hence I never gave more than passing consideration to submitting this particular book around to agents or editors. However, the publisher in question has accepted works shorter than Roc Rider in the past and with one of their own authors recommending it, I feel I may actually have a shot with this one. Don’t get me wrong, the odds are still pretty darn slim. But, its worth a try. And if they aren’t interested, I’ll just move forward with my plan to independently release Roc Rider as before.
What does this mean for you, the readers? Well, if Roc Rider gets picked up by this publisher it means, despite my announcement in December, that it likely won’t release in 2017 after all. That’s okay, because a publishing deal with a small press would benefit you the readers as much as it would me in the end. If they reject Roc Rider, which statistically speaking is the more likely outcome, the wait time for their response may set me back a little, but I’m still confident I could get the book out before the end of the year.
Now I mentioned at the beginning of this post I was slightly behind schedule on revisions. Why the setback? A number of reasons, mostly small. Usually its the small things that set a writer back, not the earth shattering stuff.
One was writing the first short story for the blog. I took probably more time than I needed to going over it to make sure I was happy with how the character was coming across and how the story was turning out. While I hadn’t intended to, I ended up putting Roc Rider on hold for several days while I worked on the short fiction. I think I’m just going to have to plan on doing this with future short fictions.
Secondly, I’ve been wrestling with a big character decision in regards to one of the secondary characters that really needed to be settled before I could advance any further with the revisions as it affects a number of things coming up later in the manuscript. This was a decision I gave a lot of thought to earlier and finally decided to put off. I figured as I worked the answer would become more clear on this one. I was wrong, and now I’m right back to wrestling with it.
This has proved a difficult choice because, while the comment from the beta reader isn’t wrong, it isn’t necessarily a problem either. But it could be, so I have to figure out whether its something that needs changed or not. I won’t go into details, to avoid spoiling anything for those who plan to read the book when it comes out, but it involves some of the women characters in the book. I’m going to give myself another day to consider it, but I’m leaning toward not changing anything. Partly because the beta reader in question is a man, and none of the vocal feminist women who beta read it noted it as a problem.
Finally, for those awaiting an update on the choose your path adventure game I’m afraid there isn’t much to report this month. I got some more floor plan drawing done but Roc Rider and the short story have taken up most of my creative time. I will try hard to have something more concrete for you on this next month.
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Good to know! Glad you’re moving ahead with Roc Rider. It’s good to consider a traditional publisher, as they may be able to market your work more widely than you can as an Indie.