Unrepresented

With the slicing cut of his broadsword (Okay it was really just an email) the intrepid author severed his ties with his agent and agency. In one fell swoop he became that anathema the publishing elite call…the Unrepresented!

Yes, I felt it was time to take back control of my writing. While I believe Saritza is a great agent, we were just not meshing as a team. I wish her and her clients all the best, and there is certainly no hard feelings. I am grateful she accepted me as a client in the first place.

Having said that, I am glad to be back in control of my writing and have begun to look at my older work with an eye on revision and sending it out to publishers myself. My first project will be There’s no such thing as Werewolves, the first book in the Demon Gate saga. If I can get this puppy sold I’ll have Templars gate ready for a follow up.

Can I do this by myself? Time will tell.

Stay tuned…

Steve

New look

Still playing with the look of the blog. The last theme seemed a bit busy.

I’m very excited with the thought of being published. A Requiem for Poseidon is set in the same universe as Son of Thunder and Daughter of Darkness. I sent a new edit of Son of Thunder to my agent and I’m looking forward to her comments. I was inspired to do some work on Daughter of Darkness yesterday. I think that story is coming together nicely, and meshing well with SoT.

I also have a new story boiling in my brain. I’m planning on holding off starting it until November to use as my NaNoWriMo novel. It’s something completely different. I’m still not sure if I should be working on something different, or the sequels of the things I’ve already written. I’m hoping my agent will give me some direction on that.

Anyway, it’s all got to be written eventually, so I guess it doesn’t matter what I work on right now. After this next weekend I should have a good stretch of uninterrupted writing time to play around in, so I will dive deeply into some project.

I’ll keep you posted,

Steve

Reboot

It was a busy summer for me and the end result is that my writing suffered, as did my blogging. It’s time for a reboot. Of my blog and my writing. The fall and winter months will afford me lots of time to spend in front of my computer, and if I can just kick my gaming addiction down a few gears I should be able to get some quality writing done.

I have decided to go back to my roots a bit and am revisiting my Demon Gate series. Demons of Dusk will be the third book, and the story is really growing in my mind right now. It’s twenty-five years in the future and this story centers on the children conceived in the first two books. It’s a dark future where the demons have taken over earth. Conversely the humans in the demon dimension have made great strides. I’m still banging together the first few chapters, but it is shaping up to be a really fun ride.

I may do some major editing of the first two books in the series, possibly add story and expand the world a bit. I’m going to check with my agent on what she thinks of the idea.

I also plan to reboot this blog, taking down some old content, creating some new and getting back to blogging regularly. I will be abandoning the A Passion for Painting project and taking down Purple Passion in preparation for some new content.

Welcome Autumn! Time to dig in.

Steve

 

Beta Break

Well, I did get the revised version of There’s no suuch thing as werewloves out to my beta readers before Thanksgiving. I’ve already started to get some responses, but I’ll wait for a few more before I go in for revisions. I had a great Thanksgiving break. Lots of food, family and fun.

So during the break, while I wait for my betas to report back, I am working on my novel, Amulet of the fallen god. It’s at around 40,000 words right now and I’d like it to finish right around 100,000 words, so there is lots to go.

It’s a very busy time of year, even for an old, retired guy, but I’m hoping I can push the story ahead a bit in the next two weeks, then return to Werewolves and shore it up before Christmas, to give my agent a nice present.

Happy holidays,

Steve

Alpha ready.

Today I feel like a writer. I was up at around 3:30 this morning feeling like I just had to finish the rough draft of my current WIP,  There’s no such thing as werewolves. This is what I call the Alpha version, and as I compose this post it just finished printing out on my printer.

As I write I sometimes leave holes in the story that I need to go back and plug, because I just cant wait to write the next scene, or a section is giving me some problems. Eventually I have to go back and plug those holes in the document. This is for me the hardest part of writing.

The concept through the initial run through is the fun/exciting part of writing for me. I rush ahead, and discover the story as it unfolds. I get to know my characters, run them up a tree, and throw rocks at them. Fun! I jump forward and avoid the parts I’m just not sure of, or am not ready to write. Then comes clean-up time, and it becomes really easy to avoid writing entirely, which I have been guilty of, quite a bit, over the past few weeks. It’s also why I haven’t posted here lately. (Sorry)

Anyway, as of this morning the hard work on this story is done. Now comes the polish, where first I go through a printed out (Alpha) version looking for obvious errors/problems/stuff-I-really-thought-was-good-when-I-wrote-it-but-in-reality-sucks. From this beast will emerge the Beta version of the story, which will be sent to a group of friends that I trust to be brutally honest with me about how much the story stinks. I’ll have a couple of weeks where I won’t look at the story at all. In fact I’m planning on writing something completely different during the time the story is at my Betas.

Eventually these wonderful people will get back to me with comments, corrections, and input on the story which I will go through and accept or reject, before the final phase of the project, where I will put together a summary of the story and send it off to my agent.

It is my hope that this story will be in my agents hands before Christmas, and I will be starting the new year off, up to my chin in my fantasy novel I’ve titled Amulet of the Fallen God. It should be about 4 to 5 times longer than the Templar stories, and be a bit of a change from that line. There is at least one more Templar story to tell, but I’m not quite ready to write it yet.

So, the Alpha awaits me. A break and Lunch comes first. Then a quiet corner, a cup of tea…and revision.

Look out Betas, here it comes….

Steve

Oh, the distractions of life.

Between home renovations and repairs, traveling, and a rather nasty sinus infection it’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks, but I’m happy to announce that today There’s no such thing as werewolves went over the 20,000 word mark. I expect the story to end up at around 25,000 words so I’m closing in on the finish of the rough draft. I have to admit this story has been fun to write, and there have been quite a few surprises along the way.

I tend to write straight through a story, without any outline and only a vague idea of where the story will end up. As usual this one got sidetracked, and taken over by the characters on a regular basis, but I’m starting to believe that my characters write a better story than I do. So it’s all to the good.

I have coming up, toward the end of the month, two weeks where I will be on the road. I’m sure my writing will be spotty and my blogging nonexistent during that time, so I’m hoping to finish up the rough draft and have a good start on the first edit before I leave. I would like to have the work in the hands of my beta readers by mid November, and in the hands of my agent before Christmas.

I do plan on having an interview with my Agent here soon, so you can get to know her a bit. It’s in the works, I promise.

Until next time,

Steve

More good news

I just received word from my agent that along with Templars Gate she will also be representing my short story Dark Awakening. So I will now have two stories ‘in play’ as I finish up There’s no such thing as werewolves, which is turning out to be a very fun prequel to Templars Gate.

My new agent, by the way, is Saritza Hernández. She is the ePub Agent at the L. Perkins Agency ( http://www.lperkinsagency.com/home ). I am so thrilled to have her on board. I plan to do a ‘Meet my agent’ blog soon, so we can all get to know her better.

Right now I have a Letter of Agreement to fill out and send, and some writing to do, so until next time…

Steve