Knowing verses learning

It’s a lot easier to know you have a publishable novel than to actually find that out.

Now that journalist is no longer a viable profession my life is set on a path that’s only acceptable outcome is life as a novelist. Yes, its not all I can do, but anything else would require a massive change, either a move to another city to work for yet another newspaper that may or may not lay me off or file for bankruptcy, or returning to school to chase a piece of paper.

I started writing my first novel in college, it was crap and never was finished. I made my first serious effort when in 2000 and prep sports writer in the wasteland that is rural North Carolina. I flogged away on that story through five complete re-writes over six years and honestly its still not publishable. It’s not unique, it’s not inventive, it doesn’t add anything or push the genre in any new direction, it’s just straight up epic fantasy and honestly it’s not even that good.

I kept working on that novel until the end of 2006 when I finally decided it just wasn’t strong enough to ever make a good story. Epic fantasy isn’t a hot genre, it’s hard to make a sale and again, honestly the book wasn’t that good, and after being told that by not just one, but two agents at a convention in Myrtle Beach I buried it.

I remember being cold, almost empty inside during the rest of that convention. I was so ready to be published, I just knew it. I had put so much work into the trilogy it just had to be good, it had to be. I had been told I was close by an agent whose a giant in my field, and damn it I had to be. I was close, perhaps talented, and a professional journalist. I felt entitled to success.

That weekend while driving the seven hours from back from Myrtle Beach something else began to form. I had a character in the back of my head for a few years and maybe it was time to take her out and let her run a bit. I’d move into urban fantasy, it’s a hotter genre, easier to get published and since I was already close it should be easy to crank out another novel and I was still less than a year
away from being published.

According to my computer’s records I started working on the next novel “Debt Dealer,” the day I got back from the conference. It was different but still very much a middle of the genre book. I thought it was the best thing ever and with about 45,000 words completely I went back to the Myrtle Beach conference again in 2007 for a critique and a slush session feed back.

Armed with my best effort to date I thought for sure I had broken through, only this time to be told it wasn’t unique or interesting by an agent whose a giant in the field and by the Publisher of Bane Books. I recorded the sit down critique I received from the publisher. I haven’t had the heart to listen to it, and the idea still makes me cringe almost four years later. She didn’t get past the first line of my synopsis before telling me she wouldn’t buy it and didn’t think anyone else would. While she was nice enough to say there were elements of my story and style she liked she didn’t feel it was unique or strong enough to sell.

So once again on a lengthy car trip from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta I made another decision. It wasn’t to start on any specific novel, but that was the last time anyone would tell me that my stories were too similar to something else. For better or worse I’d be off on my own, you might not like my work but I’m going to be damned if I’m going to go down because I sound too much like another author.

So here I am with a new book. It uses some of the same characters from the one the publisher spoke so disparagingly about but it sits on different ground, and I’m a different author. “Witch Queen” includes a number of the elements she said she liked and wanted to hear more of. It’s gone through four massive revisions, draws from largely untapped mythology and does things I’ve not seen the genre do before.

I don’t wonder anymore what people say when they refer to, “Finding your voice as an author,” because I’ve found mine, and I don’t sound like any author I read. I’ve read through this book five or six times and I love it. It’s me on a page, my politics, my beliefs, my structure, my narrative, my twists, my story. It’s me.

It’s being read by an increasing number of people. My brother straight up told me he didn’t like one draft, another reader tells me, “It’s going to be big, like Oprah Book Club big.” Of course the sample is biased, but I think I could be “there.”

The biggest difference this time I think is that I don’t expect anything. I’m hopeful, but after having my heart crushed so many times I don’t know if I’ll ever achieve anything.

It’s painful to drop your heart and soul into a mail box. The book has been ready for over two months, the cover letter, synopsis and first five pages printed and ready for over two weeks. I got it done Monday afternoon. In a few weeks I should hear back from the agent who had nice things to say about my work but passed on the chance to represent me five years ago.

Stand or fall this time I’m telling my own stories in my own voice.