Thursday, August 2, 2012

On Waiting on Decisions


I've never been too patient a man.

Ever. Even when Christ- mas was around the corner, I used to sit at the tree studying the gifts to see if they would give away any secrets as to what they contained. I would have given anything for x-ray vision, but I had to wait.

The process of book publishing is somewhat of a waiting game too. These things do not hurry and they aren't influenced by sales or discounts. I say this because I got an email today how BookBaby.com is coming down on their prices for a short time. If you purchase a book package, you'll get an e-book package added in at a little extra charge, and vice versa. But the truth is is that BookBaby.com wants your business. But can they move ahead my timetable? No. Not at all, because as I had agreed, JP can start work on my manuscript at her leisure. I'm certain that the expansive reach of some .com doesn't jar her from bed an onto my writing. She is closing down her present clients and is going ahead with mine in time.

So what do I so while I'm waiting? What can I do. Play with my fingers, play games, play with my Playstation 3 or cook a lot. I'm not a good cook, and I can only get so far with Max Payne3 before I start to loose my edge and make stupid mistakes. But you know what I am....I am a writer and this is what I want to do with my life. I want to write for a living, so I write. I write and I write hard. I am a son of a bitch with the written word. So with that being said, I took the characters from the manuscript that I gave JP and began fleshing out another story.

It started to take shape, then form and then life. I poured myself into it and in a shorter time than I have ever had, I had finished the manuscript. Then I stopped back and edited it for the first time. A double whammy in a month. I've worked up a sequel for a story that I never thought I would write a sequel for. Here's another joke, or travesty of life. This story, Cover of Darkniss is one of those stories that I sat down and put together. It was a Noir piece, which everyone hates. It has thin characters and the only reason why it has a twist in it is because, frankly, I was bored in the direction that the story was going in. But after the twist, things became difficult for my simple detective story, which made my ears perk up and my juices start to flow. It cruised along now, bubbling with steam. It was unique, crisp, and written without so much literary weight that I usually put on many of my stories, making it an easier read than most of my stuff.

I packaged it and sent it out to traditional publishers and agents...well, the truth is, and anyone that's a writer can attest to, I sent out a fucking QUERY letter to agents and publishers. Query letters that are demanded to be shorter and shorter as if a good book can be conveyed to someone else in a page or less? Have you ever heard a person speak well about a book that they have just read? They literally gush over it, and yet, publishers and agents want you to get to the point in four sentences or less. How is that giving my MANUSCRIPT a fighting chance? How does that give all the nuances, the twists, the turns, the tension building scenes a voice to be understood and heard?

I'm tired of the Publisher/Agent bullshit now, and I hope that individual publishing takes off and allows the fans to read through your books and see if they want them or not. Let the people who want to enjoy it, take the time to evaluate it before purchasing it. So, Cover of Darkniss was not my best project, not my dream project, or the project that I felt would make me a household name, but it was the project worthy enough to become a victim of vanity press if this is what BookBaby.com was. But it was also a good enough manuscript to hit the market if people began purchasing and reading it. It's entertaining, which is the entire point of writing. To entertain the reader from page to page.

So the first part of the manuscript has been sent off to JP whom I'm am waiting for word on. Hopefully sometime in August? That would be nice. But now I'm sitting on the sequel, and like I told you about my early Christmases, I can't take waiting. As I was searching for JP I met up with another editor with similar qualifications. LV. LV was sad that she didn't get my project, but she did say to contact her again if I get any further projects.

Would it be crazy to go ahead and work on two books at the same time and have them published nearly back to back on BookBaby.com or all of their distributing outlets. That might not be good, that might not be bad. I'm just going to do what I do best right now to kill time.

I'm going ahead and write the third part of the trilogy.

Gregory

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