I’ve found an artist to help me get the website put together for Heretic. I’m going to write up a few character descriptions this weekend and see what he cane do. I have a content outline formed for the site, and it’s going to be very cool if I can get it all put together. I finished the last round of edits on the hard copy yesterday. This weekend I’ll apply them to the electronic copy and call it the FINAL DRAFT. I’ll be very happy to stop looking at it for awhile.
I have a few more agents I’m hoping to query next week. I have one other resource to tap after this. If neither yields results, I’m going to self-publish. Fuck the system. I’ll do it my own way, on my own, just like I’ve done everything else in my life.
I went to my writer’s meeting tonight for the first time since the spring semester started. It was good to see the folks who showed up.
Heretic is dead in the water right now. Mt attempts to get an agent have all failed miserably, and I don’t have time to hunt up more addresses right now. I did enter the book along with a few short stories in the 2007 WV Writer’s contest, hoping to win some accolades that I can use to make the book look better to publishers. I decided to skip the First Chapters contest. I had a bad gut instinct about that one, so I let it slide. I thought I might be better off to use an alternate beginning to the novel, and I ran a poll to see which people liked best. Very few people participated, but based on the feedback I did receive, I decided to use both! I’ve also started the very final reading of the book. I’m making one last pass to look for passive language, typos, and such. Then I’m putting it down for good. I have ideas flowing for the sequel to Heretic. I will have to start writing soon, because I’m going crazy, just sitting here thinking about it. The search for an agent may have to get bumped down the list for a few weeks. I have too many other things demanding my time and attention right now.
I’m still trying to decide how to begin my novel, but I’ll have to make a decision very soon. I’m considering submission to two contests, and the deadline for both is March15. I may end up using both intros. LOL.
I’ve had three agents ask to see more of Heretic, and after viewing it, all three have declined to review it any further.
It has been a most disheartening experience, one that has raised a specter of doubt in my mind. My faith in the overall quality of the book remains unshaken; however, I do begin to worry that the beginning is not strong enough.
The beginning was originally told as a flashback, as a scout reported the events of the last few days to her commander. It had two problems. One, it didn’t work as a spoken report, because my narrative was more detailed and written in a way that was much different than people speak. (It was also anticlimactic because the reader knew right away that the scout lives through the ordeal, since she’s the one telling the tale.) Second, it took entirely too long to get to some really interesting action. It had a very slow start.
I rewrote the beginning, changing the point of view, so the reader experiences the events as they happen to the scout. The changes made the story much more suspenseful and dramatic, and it allowed me to get to some interesting parts much sooner, but still not soon enough to suit me. I wrote a prologue detailing the preceding events which were the cause for the scout and her unit to be in the area. I thought it provided a pretty big hook in the first two or three pages. VIEW MORE