Friday, December 28, 2012

The Search for Literary Agents: My Scariest Quest Yet



Being an author and writer (there is a difference) and having many novels and publications now behind me and forthcoming I naturally want to move my blossoming career to another place all together after a while. This means going big, with an agent and getting my stories published in one of the 'Big Six' publishing houses out there. Over the last two months, on and off, I have written and sent nearly 50+ queries out to so many agencies and in this volley I have received about roughly 15+ rejections and many more than have remained silent (which in some agencies' case means they are not interested and will pass). Others I have to wait on and hope that my Celtic adventure novel, THE GIRL WITH THE RAINBOW EYES, gets accepted by one. It just takes one agent to say they will take on the book and then things can happen positively. But that itself takes time when editors are involved, shopping around for the right publishing house or imprint, and sometimes it doesn't end as well as desired (for an example read the founder of Smashwords' story). Some authors get from 50 to 100 rejections before they hit one lucky break, and then success happens and the other companies and agencies feel like fools for being so arrogant and crass about their rejections, wishing they had been the ones to make that winning decision. Maybe I might need to re-write this novel again, a fourth time, before pushing on with the agencies I haven't written to yet? I dread having to do so, but there are areas in the latter half of the novel that could be improved, even though no agent has read that part at the moment to know otherwise, but so far the few semi-personal rejections that I have been sent say that it just didn't 'click' with them. So because it isn't 'Fifty Shades of Grey', or 'Twilight' it didn't grab them? Odd to think those style of novels are the hit with the masses, when so many more read Tolkien and other Fantasy authors eagerly. 



It is a disconcerting and crippling process, all of it, in hopes of rising to a purely professional level of authorship that was never had before. I have sank 14 years into this novel, each re-write and incarnation, and it has been through some changes since I first wrote the screenplay version in the late 90's for my (then) Hollywood agent Mark Marshall. I hope again to establish those links and take my many other original and different projects into film and TV, but that is another aspect of all this. 

So in case you have been wondering where I have been at here on my blog, it isn't just the holidays that have been taking my time, but also sending out those queries, finishing up sixth adventure module for Troll Lord Games ('A Shattered Night'), and slowly getting the Codex Germanorum done (it isn't yet but close), and touching up on my Celtic novel for agents and the upcoming 'Amazon Breakthrough Novel' competition next month...so I have been busy! In the next few weeks the Codex Celtarum will be officially finished and released and module #4, 'To Kill a King' will begin production, so things are not slowing. In addition to this I have many entries that will see inclusion in the CityBook 8 with Flying Buffalo Inc. 

The next time I post, it should be good news, about what I am not sure but there are many possibilities on what it might be considering...    


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