A quick update on where things stand with my current projects.
Still no word back from any of the six publishers where I sent Shepherds of Lost Things, but I’m not surprised. A blind submission without an agent doesn’t get very far these days. That said, thank you to the one publisher who sent a polite auto-generated response advising you’d received my email. Appreciate that.
There are two publishers who have open submission periods coming up in September. So I’ve been going back over the book cleaning up even more grammar and flow issues. The Kindle Scribe has been great for this. Something about leaning over words on a page triggers more thoughts in my head than staring at the screen.
As I continue my polishing I’ve been wondering, “If a publisher asked me to cut this down to ~70,000 words, what would I do?” Right now there’s a confrontation that culminates in a car chase near the end of the book… that doesn’t lead directly to the end. Instead there’s a chapter and a half where the characters take a breath before continuing. I might tinker around with a separate draft where the car chase leads to the ending directly. Just as an experiment.
On the still being written side of things, I’m coming up on the most important chapter in Vampire Detective Agency. In chapter six the meek human and bite-happy vampire have their first real conversation. Everything with supernatural beings has to take a beat to explain how things work because everyone does it differently. It’s been a challenge. No one wants “Rules & Ediquette for Vampires 101” when they could be reading about sexy vampires and gruff detectives.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been working on this last week.
Ross Weisfish 