Publishing a Novel

I’ve decided to be very open with my latest project. I have a finished novel. I’ve tweaked it here and there. In fact, on the journal page of my website, you can read about all the iterations it went through and look at my weekly updates through last year. Now it’s go time.

My mission is to get the novel into publication without resorting to self-publishing. If I reach a point where I feel like I’ve exhausted all resources, the novel will be shelved, like so many short stories of mine in the past (and two cruddy novels that I shall not describe in this post).

My first stop on this grand tour is to find an agent. I admit that a couple of years ago, I proposed this novel to a few agents, and I only managed to get beyond the “front door” with one agent whom I met in person at World Fantasy. I’m not going to resend the proposal to any of those people, just as I wouldn’t resubmit a short story that’s been refined unless a magazine specifically asked me to. After doing some research, there are quite a few agents I want to approach with this newest proposal. I won’t get into the specifics of who I’ll be contacting, but I will probably give updates on the percentage I’ve heard back from, feedback, etc.

If I don’t find an agent willing to represent the work, I will start hitting publishers directly. I’m much more limited in who I can query directly without an agent, which is why this is my second step. No publisher has been queried for this novel in the past, so the field is wide open. As with agents, I won’t report specifics on who I’m querying, but I will give updates on the types of responses, speed of responses, etc.

I’ve gone down this road before with a cruddy novel, and even that was somewhat exciting (especially the returned manuscript that had a shoeprint on it). Now I’m going down the road with a much better novel (and more experience). Bring on the fun!

My Daughter is Born!

I received the best Christmas gift ever when my daughter, Elora, was born on the morning of the 25th. I know I’m biased, but she is the most beautiful baby in the world.

My wife started having strong contractions at 2 in the morning, and after waiting at home for a while, we went to the hospital around 5. By 9:30, we had our daughter. For a first-time mom, this was an extremely short span of time for labor.

This change in my life is showing me aspects of God that I didn’t realize before, especially His relationship between Him and us. My daughter is teaching me quite a bit about selflessness and love, and I wonder at God’s patience with us.

Not long after my daughter was born, we discovered that she had jaundice, so the hospital staff would take her into the nursery for several hours at a time to place her under the bili-lights that would break down the extra hemoglobin in her body so that she could pass it back out of her system. Each time they would return with her, my wife and I would get so excited. I think this is a glimpse of how God feels about people who accept Christ, when they declare that they want to be with Him. There’s such excitement that the heavens erupt in celebration.

This really is an amazing time for my wife and me, and I’ll do my best to cherish these moments while they last. Everyone says that children grow up so fast, and I will not be so foolish as to think otherwise.

What happened to November?

I haven’t had a post for well over a month, but things have been busier than usual for me. In addition to preparations for a baby, I’ve been working more hours, and I often work straight through my lunch. Blog posts happen during lunch, so no breaks mean no posts. Finding time for God, a marriage, children, friends, work and writing seems to be a tricky thing to pull off, especially when any of those categories require more time for a season.

My struggle is always in figuring out how much downtime to allow myself. Even with everything going full throttle right now, I do have periods of rest aside from sleeping. They aren’t often, but they do come. Writing is last on my priority list, and it isn’t an activity I consider when I want to veg. When I write, I’m striving for the best work possible, and I’m probing my imagination for characters, settings and plots. It’s enjoyable and relaxing, but it isn’t the same as completely letting go and playing video games (my personal form of brain dumping).

This period of time is stretching me. I’m learning how many hours I can actually push myself to focus, so I’m hoping that when my current project finishes up in a few months, I will channel that same time towards the other big categories of my life and not siphon any off to the downtime area.