Friday, September 7, 2018

Hooks 'n Agents 'n Things.

7th September 2018

For those people who read this blog to keep abreast of my book(s), I have some news: the last time I talked to my agent at  the beginning of this year, I had already begun my latest book, and I was feeling like I just wanted to clear the runway for it, by getting at least the last two unpublished parts of my Veil Of Time trilogy (Druid Hill and Iona) out into the world. After four plus years, Veil Of Time continues to sell, and I continue to get requests for the sequels, causing the original publisher Simon and Schuster to want to hang on to it for the time being.  My agent has taken the other books out to publishers, most recently in Scotland, but the upshot is that no publisher wants to take on two parts of a trilogy. So, I have been in a bind over it, and I told him a week or two ago I would rather just go straight to Amazon and publish there under an agreement my agency, Aevitas, has with them, rather than have these books gathering proverbial dust on my virtual shelf.


So, he has sent me the templates for book covers, and that's where that stands. He told me he has also sent out to Scottish publishers another of my books, Hazel and the Chessmen, about the theft of the Lewis Chessmen from the British Museum by a raggedy bunch of Scottish Nationals. All good. Movement has been detected.

In the beginning, when I was in my late twenties, my goal was to write five novels, so that if one of them hit the big time, I would have four others in reserve to come out in quick succession. By now, I have nine novels, quite apart from the one that is burning a hole in my head and heart, this new one, entitled, "The Second Coming."

No one can fault me for lack of persistence. I have long since put in my thousand hours. Ironically, my actual published book is probably not the most well written of my canon. But it has a hook. Being a heist, Hazel and the Chessman also has a hook.


But I have written other novels that are not bright and shiny for the gatekeepers of the publishing world - for one, my story about the Mustang. Everyone who reads it cries, but a horse story these days is not what a horse story was in Steinbeck's day. What, no sex? What, no high speed chases? What no mule with questionable gender?
Every book for the aspiring writer is going to be her next big thing. This new book doesn't have so much a hook as a whole lot of controversy. I didn't write it to dangle anything like a hook. I wrote it to answer a question in my own head. Maybe this time, that will be enough.

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