Book sale blues.
Literary agents are proving very hard to catch. I have set traps all over the swamp, but to no avail.
I'm told you just have to write to them, but that seems far too easy to be true. I'm trying it, just in case, but I'll keep those traps baited too.
There's always the possibility of sending the book directly to publishers. That feels like a bad idea. I think I'd better exhaust my list of agents before I try that. Imagine getting a request for a partial from an agent, and having to say 'I have a contract for that, actually. It arrived today. Do you want to agent it?'
That's going to get any agent's back up. It would annoy the hell out of me.
I have another book - Jessica's Trap - that no agent will be interested in because it's only 70,000 words. There's also Victor's Will, the gorefest zombie tale, but that's stuck. I wrote myself into a corner where everyone's too doomed to realistically escape. Norman's House is in second draft but it's the follow-up to Samuel's Girl. I have to resist the temptation to start Mirror-man, The Tube, Fibre, Demdike's Revival, The Armageddon Show and others. Not to mention 'Frank Herbert', the collected musings of Dume. The Alien Queen Mother suggested a graphic novel for that. I quite like the idea of having my name on a picture book. I will need someone who can draw though.
My friend Professor Crowe was right. I should have started this whole thing with a plan. Now I have one book done, one follow-up half-done, another book done but too short. I can't, at this stage, shop anything but Samuel's Girl.
Yet it would be so much easier if I had one book sold. That would certainly increase my chances with the agents. However, I don't want to drop Samuel's Girl into a non-agent deal.
My best option is to add another subplot to Jessica's Trap, increase it by 10,000 words and try selling that direct to a publisher. The writing part won't take more than a month or two, assuming Time lets me have a bit of spare room. Time hasn't been too generous in that respect lately.
I have to prepare for Halloween. All that decoration, the trees to be draped with entrails, the guests to be dipped in preservative, the incantations...
It takes time. I'll have to trust Stumpy to arrange the party details this year. He hasn't done it before. I'll just have to hope he doesn't make a complete mess of it.
If he does, I suppose I can always write about it.
