Things Are Happening!!!

Hey everybody!

There are things happening, right now, interesting things!  Well, interesting things for me.  If you're reading this you might find them interesting as well.  And if you don't, you probably won't be that interested in reading this blog.  Might I recommend you read The Atlantic?  They have some great articles.

Anyway, here are the latest developments in The Quest for Publication (tm):

First, a couple weekends ago I attended The League of Vermont Writers -- Writers Meet Agents event.  This is what I've been building toward this entire year.  The event itself was great, very interesting panels, met some cool folks, even signed up for a writer's group.  Of the agents present, three represent adult sci-fi authors.  I signed up for a 10-minute pitch session with each one.

My hope was that one would like my pitch, and invite me to submit a query, synopsis, and 25 or 50 pages of my manuscript.  I did not expect anyone to request my full manuscript.  Because, you know, that would be overly optimistic.

All three agents requested the full manuscript.

So, that felt pretty good.  I left the event thinking, "I have no idea if I can write, or if I'll ever get published, but I guess I know how to give a pitch!"

I'm still holding back on getting too excited.  After all it's quite possible no one will want to pick up the representation, but still.  Cool.

Second, I spent the previous week frantically finishing up the edits to my manuscript.  I printed it out and gave it a full read-through, probably the first time I'd done that in a while, beginning to end.  It's 400 pages.  I found a dispiriting number of nits and minor edits, and realized I had to move some chapters around, but I got that done.

Third, I submitted the query letter, synopsis, and manuscript to the three agents, plus a fourth agent who's a friend of mine and asked to take a look at it.

So that's it, my novel, Exiled! A Pangalactic Novel is now out there in the ether.  It's done.  Or at least done for now.  And I can stop thinking about it for a while.

In the meantime, I intend to go back to posting some short stories from the Pangalactic Empire on this site, and I'm about to start work on my next novel -- a piece of middle-grade fiction about... well, I'm going to hold off on detail for now.

Yeeha.