The Waiting Game

I have finally finished the two book proposals I've been working on for the last few months. A proposal includes an in depth summary of the book's entire plot, a description of every character and their motivations, and the first three chapters of the book, polished and finished. Both of these proposals were about thirty or so pages long. My agent let me know that she is sending off the proposals to the publisher who asked for them. Now the waiting game begins. All that work, and the publisher could just decided they aren't even interested. Then again, they could make me an offer on both books. The suspense is going to kill me over the next couple months. But that is a huge part of the author game--the waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting . . .

First Book Proposal--DONE!

One book proposal down--only one-half of one to go. Then it is off to the publisher with both proposals! I read the first chapter of the finished proposal to my writer's group and they loved it. Now let's hope the publisher will feel the same. Both of these stories are brand new, so it has been fun to get to know two whole new casts of characters right from the start--especially in such a short period of time.

A brand new ghost story and an extremely unusual story involving horses. NOT a horse story. I always swore I would never write a horse story.

A New Kind of Story

Whenever I begin writing a new story, I like to make a necklace that goes along with the manuscript I'm writing. This is the newest one I created. A pale girl, with hair the color of moonlight, riding as fast as she can through a dark forest on a black horse . . . don't you wish you knew more? The best part is the little girl's skin is made from glow-in-the-dark clay. When you turn out the lights, she glows green! Very mysterious. : )

All About Proposals--the Book Kind

A publisher recently asked my agent to have me send them pitches for six of my ideas for future books. A pitch is when you write one or two short paragraphs describing your story idea so that a publisher can decide if they are interested or not. This publisher came back asking for proposals for not just one, but TWO of them. Of course, neither of these stories happened to be one of the four I was already actively working on. Which means I have to start from scratch. Beginning a new story is always exciting--but oh so much more work than you could possibly imagine. And now I have two stories to write proposals for. A proposal, in case you were wondering, is several pages of description of the complete plot of the story, character descriptions of each and every character that makes an appearance in the book, as well as the first three to four finished chapters of the book. I've got a lot of work ahead of me, but it will all be worth it, if the publisher likes what they see in my proposals. One of these books is a brand new story I came up with just recently, so I've never mentioned it on this blog before. The other is a story I did mention on this blog once--but I'm not going to say anymore about it at this time. (This particular publisher likes to keep their future stories under wraps.) But if you read through all my older posts, you could get a hint of what might be coming soon. Wish me luck and keep your fingers crossed!

The Deal with Sequels

So I have some bad news regarding the Forbidden Sea sequel. My publisher has decided they are not going to publish the sequel at this time. The reason for this is that sequels always make less money than a first book. So even though a first book might sell pretty well, the only way a publisher will want a sequel to that book is if it does REALLY well--as opposed to pretty well. Forbidden Sea did well enough for them to want to see other books by me, but not well enough for them to want to publish the sequel. However, if one of the other manuscripts I'm writing were to get accepted for publication and do REALLY well in sales, eventually, they might be interested in the sequel.  But not right now. The good news is that one of my other manuscripts is currently in submission to a publisher right at this moment. Will they want to publish it? I won't know that for a while yet. It takes time for publishers to make up their minds. Way too much time. We authors have to learn patience. So keep your fingers crossed for me and I'll keep writing away on all the other stories I'm currently working on. That way I have something ready to go out next--just in case.

The Curse

Okay, it's official. I'm cursed. I wrote on this blog once before about how a certain Chapter Seventeen was giving me all sorts of grief. It took way too many revisions for me to count in order to make that chapter finally behave itself. But as I worked on the story--moving chapters around, combining some chapters, getting rid of some all together--chapter seventeen stopped being chapter seventeen long ago. It has a whole new number now and I really like the way it finally came out in the end. But I still shudder when I think about what it took to get there. So today I began the struggle all over again, with a brand new chapter that won't behave. This one is every bit as bad as the other, maybe even worse. I can see there are weeks of hard work ahead of me to figure out how to make it behave. So why am I writing about this? I just went to write the chapter number for this new troublesome chapter.  It is Chapter Seventeen.

*Cue Twilight Zone music*

Waiting for a Nibble

Publishing is a lot like fishing on a lake. You cast out your manuscript and sit there just waiting for a publishing fish to bite. Only in publishing, the wait can sometimes be years. It took two years for Scholastic to finally get back and make me an offer for Forbidden Sea. The waiting game is not fun--but it is a necessary evil that all authors must learn to live with. I have just finished a new book proposal and my agent is now beginning to make the rounds by sending it to all the publishers on her list. I  have lots of other manuscripts to work on in the mean time, but I always feel tense when the waiting begins all over again. I think this particular manuscript has a real chance to get published--but for now, I have to wait. : (