Yesterday afternoon at some time past three o'clock, I finally submitted my entry for The Terry Pratchett Prize. Squee! For those who haven't been reading up on my antics, the book I chose to enter was The Osprey and the Crow, book one of The Seraphimé Saga. I'm not seriously entertaining the idea that I'm going to win (but wouldn't that be incredible?), as I'm certain the competition out there is tough, and there will be many well-written books that do not have the physical impossibility of shape-shifting.
That said, I think my story is pretty good, and I worked so hard on trying to make the best that I can. In retrospect, it was a really enlightening experience.
I now know how to format a manuscript properly. I can spot many of my writing errors. I'm a much stronger self-editor now.
I still don't like editing.
I am most impressed that I managed to get it in right on time, according to my self-set (albeit second) deadline. You couldn't see it, but I just gave myself a high-five. It looked rather odd, so I'm glad you didn't see it.
I'm celebrating my achievement by giving myself the right to goof off for the rest of the week. I need to rest and recharge my batteries. I need to uncross my eyes (darn editing!) and stretch out my fingers. I need to get my imagination off Seraphimé's world so I can concentrate on other worlds.
I do have a project lined up. I need to finish rearranging The Great Man series. I'm currently halfway through rewriting the ending of book 3 (Overlord). Once that is done, I have to make a start on the new book 4 (Puppet Master) and fix up book 5 (The Great Man - which was previously the fourth book, and had a different title).
The Great Man series is still my favourite. Of all the books I've written and plan to write, Julian's story still pulls at me the most. I can't wait until I see this story in print. If you want all the titles in The Great Man series, the working titles are thus:
Book 1 - The Third Prince
Book 2 - Lord of Horses
Book 3 - Overlord
Book 4 - Puppet Master
Book 5 - The Great Man
All but book 4 are more or less written. Inserting an entire book has disrupted the final three books in a fairly major fashion. However, the first two books haven't changed much at all. I just need to apply the things I've learnt with The Terry Pratchett Prize entry to them before I think of shopping this series around again. Even then, I think I might concentrate on The Seraphimé Saga or some of the stories which are starting to bud in my head before I shop The Great Man series again.
It's a great series, though I think I did it a disservice by trying to shop it before it was properly ready. That is to say, before I had any idea about formatting etc. I won't be in a hurry to shop it around once all of that is fixed up.
It just goes to show, you need to do your research. Learn from my mistakes! I was very fortunate that I had help from a published author who showed me the correct way to do these things. Thanks again, Carlos, by the by.
Well, this was a very long post to simply say that I'm goofing off this week! I should leave you alone and let you get back to your lives. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
2 comments:
Whats the process for shopping a book like in Canada?
A writer friend of mine here is shopping a couple around the Oz publishers and in general they accept only the first 3 chapters in first instance. Slush piles are huge, and the trick seems to be to tart yourself around at as many conferences and writing events as possible, get names of real people, and then approach via email with the 'Hi, we met at.....' line. They also want a strong online presence, so she's set up a twitter feed and writes short stories specifically for that medium, tries to get as many random people to be her 'friend' on facebook (under her writing name) and blogs prodigiously.
She has one book thats been with a publisher for over 12 months now, and went off to an independent reader a few months back (apparently a good thing). But generally speaking, she's been trying for nearly 10 years to get published.
I feel her pain. I've been trying to shop The Third Prince around for a while now. It sounds like she's had some good news, though!
Aside from this blog, I do have several public forums that I'm working with to try and get my name out there. I have a facebook fan page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ottawa-ON/S-M-Carriere/240070660639
It felt really weird asking people to be my "fan," I'll tell you! A little pathetic, really...
I'm also on twitter (I think the link is: http://twitter.com/SMCarriere)
and Myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/556854292
It's slow going for me, this 'building a platform' thing, but I'm trying!
With luck, perhaps my self-published short story anthology (http://thedyinggod.blogspot.com) will help build at least some readers. Who knows?
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