UPDATE: Project 1 and More!

Greetings writers and readers! It's been a long time since my last update, mostly because of the sheer amount of things that have been going on in the background with project 1 and it's road to publication. For that, I apologize, however, I do have some updates to share with you and give you a preview of things to come.

Project 1 Update:

FINAL DRAFT COMPLETE!

In my last post, I had initiated the fourth and draft of my debut epic fantasy novel, that we have been referring to as Project 1.

Since that post, I have completed the fourth draft of Project 1 and have officially dubbed it my final draft and ready for traditional publishing.

So what comes next? In the last couple of weeks, I have entered what many authors and literary professionals call "The Query Trenches". This means that I have started to submit Project 1 to literary agents for potential representation of Project 1 to traditional publishing houses. So far, I have submitted to 61 agents, and received 11 rejections.

While it is disheartening to see something I've poured 13 months of my life into not being picked up as quickly as I would have hoped it would have been, I think the biggest thing to take away from it is that professionals in the industry are reading my manuscript. That, in and of itself, is a win in my eyes.

The upside to this, is that I'm still querying agents, and there are a whole slew of them out there that are on my list that are not accepting queries at this time for various reasons. According to Query Manager, there are over 300 agents that accept queries for manuscripts in my genre, of that, I have queried only 62 based on my own research and desires. Moral of the story: This is going to be a long hall and we'll just need to be patient to see what this process turns over.

At the end of my final draft, the manuscript ended up being around 130k words after many cuts and alterations from the original 177k that was my first draft. Perhaps, the most difficult part of the editing process was "cutting your darlings", or simply put, cutting things from the manuscript that may not readily advance the plot. I admit that many things were cut that I desperately wanted to leave in because of the character development portions within and the illustration of character relationships in those scenes, but in today's world, super-long manuscripts are not things you want to be submitting. So, somethings had to go.

Why didn't I Just Self-Publish?

This is a question I wrestled with for a very long time, since the early days of the first draft of Project 1 and honestly, there isn't a great answer.

To be honest, I chose to try and traditionally publish because I wanted to be vetted as an author and be able to take advantage of the opportunities and prestige of being published by a great house with great authors. While this was my reasoning for this decision, your needs and reasons may and should be very different from mine. Take a look at my post about Traditional vs Self-Publishing here.

If I Can't Traditionally Publish, Will I Consider Self-Publishing?

Honestly, I'm still wrestling with this question myself and don't readily have an answer to it. But stay tuned to this blog for updates on that!

Project 2 Update:

Re-Start Your engines!

I'm very excited to announce that I am starting to mull over the character of Kai and his curse. With this comes my revisiting of my initially drafted chapters and notes. I'm starting to develop his story more and have an endgame thought up for this character whom I'm sure will be everyone's new favorite scoundrel.

In addition to that, I am excited to announce that Project 2, and by proxy Kai and his cursed sword, will be set within the same world as Project 1! As Project 1's series continues to develop there will be mentions of Kai's adventures from long ago and how he shaped Damien's world and the world of the Magi. There are also plans for a cross over nexus event between these two characters which will ultimately shape both of their destinies and the fates of the world of Evelyn. So, stay tuned for more on that as it develops!

Project 3:

Where did it go?

As Many of you will have noticed, I have removed Fire Kissed Rebel (working title for Project 3) from the up and coming section. This does not mean that it has been shelved for good, only temporarily. Because of the work I am doing int he Query Trenches right now, I'd like to see where those winds take me first before I fully commit to that project.

The good news is that I already have portions of that story developed and will be ready to go with it once we know what direction we will be going with it.

I know, I know, lots of stuff has been going on. But, I will be keeping you all well appraised of my journey in the Query Trenches and be sure to give you updates as we go along.

I'd like to take a moment to thank all of my beta readers who helped get Project 1 across the finish line. With your stalwart help and dedication we now have a cast to follow and a world full of mystery that we can explore with them. Thank you!

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