Querying and other BS
I hate querying. But perhaps not for the reason everyone else who has queried a book hates querying. I hate it because I’m a terrible salesman. I always have been. On top of that, and I’m sure everyone hates this part of it, I really struggled to find a satisfying way to condense months worth of writing into one page. That being said, I managed to accomplish the onerous task just in time for many - if not most - agents to stop accepting queries! When I started working on it I thought luck was with me as the completion of my novel had aligned with the reopening of many agent’s query inbox after the summer closing, however it took me so stinking long to finish the darn thing that I missed the window entirely.
No worries though, the extra time spent not researching agents has been dedicated to, you guessed it, writing another book! Book two, which is technically book three but book one is forever locked away in the closet of shame, is not the sequel to Of Knives and Knaves. I desperately wanted to write that book, but I decided that it didn’t make sense for me to dedicate so much time to a sequel to a book that might never get picked up. Besides, I think it’s important for me to learn how to start and finish an entire story in a single stand alone book. Which is what my current WIP (Work In Progress) is. The working Title is Fractured and so far I’m very excited by this story. The plan is for it to be much shorter than OKaK’s (I’ve only just done this abbreviation for the first time here and I’m very happy with it} 117k word count. It also has a considerably smaller number of important characters which made the outline much shorter as well. I’m also going into to this with much less preparation than in my other two projects as a way to see how I like writing in a style more akin to discovery also known as gardener style.
Anywho, this is pretty much all I have to say here. I know I said in my first blog post that I would not be posting very consistently but I’ve decided I’m going to try and change that. Not only is this potentially a way to improve my writing, the best way to improve is to do, but the few agents I have queried have asked for a website if applicable. And since it does applic to me, I might as well give them something to see if they actually do end up visiting (Agents if you’re reading this, please send me a manuscript request… please) I might as well give them something to look at. And if two wasn’t enough, here’s a third excuse. If this somehow, against all odd, does manage to earn a following, though I can’t imagine how, it doesn’t hurt to have a pre-existing fan base when trying to sell a manuscript to agents and publishers. So, farewell. And if you actually made it this far, thanks!
