So it’s been a long time since I updated. The reason for this is two-fold… Firstly, I am on staff for two large conventions in the New England area (Anime Boston and ConnectiCon), and this year they fell within two months of one another. This meant that I was working my tail off trying to ensure that my duties for both conventions were fulfilled while also working a 40-hour job. Fun! (But definitely worth it in the end.)
Secondly, I am getting married on September 21st, so I have a lot of wedding planning to do! We’re having a relatively small wedding (100 people), but even so, there’s a lot to plan.
Both of these things have sadly eaten into my writing time considerably. Which brings me to my next bit of news…
I did hear back from the agent who requested to read PRAYERS TO THE WIND. She enjoyed the book, but had a couple issues with it, which in retrospect I agree with. I am making some massive revisions in order to fix these problems (this entails adding in about 6-7 chapters and approximately 25k words worth of content). I am pretty certain that the reason for the biggest of these problems was that I was trying so hard to keep the book under 100k words. I skimped on many things that I normally would not have, and it made the book weaker overall. But after speaking with several people in the industry about it, I’m no longer afraid of having a book that is over 100k words. In the words of one agent, “It’s not the number of words on the page, it’s how good those words are.” So in this draft, I am ignoring word-count entirely and focusing on making the story as good as it can be. I think that this will remedy the issues the agent had, and then I will be resubmitting.
In the meantime, I have had another agent request to take a look at some sample chapters. I sent the first three (revised), and am waiting to hear what he thinks of them. More there as events progress.
In other news, some friends of mine are putting together a horror anthology (art and literature) and have invited me to submit. All proceeds will be going to charity. I am very excited to take a stab at writing some horror short stories (ha, stab… horror… get it?), especially since Stephen King has had such a huge influence on my reading and writing style over the years. Maybe I’ll post some short blurbs from works in progress as I write them.
Lastly… In the past month, I have sat in on a lecture by Stephen King, met Terry Brooks at a meet-and-greet luncheon, and spent a fair amount of time at ConnectiCon chatting about writing with Brandon Sanderson, Margaret Killjoy, Michael J. Sullivan and Bryce Moore. I have also joined a new writing group of 12 people. I am inspired and reinvigorated by all of these experiences, and happy to be back to work on the PRAYERS TO THE WIND revisions – two chapters done so far and going strong! I aim to have the sixth draft done by the wedding.
And I promise to start updating more often, too. 🙂