Novel Thoughts

 I’ve been quiet for a while because I was working on a novel.  I’ve written novels before; seven of them.  Thing is, they’ve never been published.  One was under contract and then cancelled.  Now it’s under consideration again.  The other six are very patient.

In addition to these novels, I’ve also written a nonfiction manuscript using my pen name.  It’s not published either.  The reason for this cross-over is that my current employment might become my past job if anyone read this piece.  Best to keep my identity false.

Long-form writing is something I enjoy doing.  I do want some of the novels to be published, but it seems that you have to have someone take a chance on one before anyone will bother to look at another.  Such is the writing life.

Just a thought, but for my fiction you need to give it a little time.  The first page might not snatch you, but the stories draw you in.  I read novels like that.  There’s nothing wrong with them.

In the meantime I’ve been considering self-publishing a collection of short stories.  I’ve got plenty of them to choose from.  I want them to be thematic, however, and the themes I choose end up having a handful of stories, but not enough for an entire collection.

Then there’s the question of how to go about self-publishing.  Many people I don’t know contact me on social media offering to help with this.  I fear most of them are scams.  It sounds much easier to have a traditional publisher handle the details.

To do that, you need to have a novel or two that gets some notice.  My latest novel I will once again take into that lion’s den known as the agent search.  I need to steel myself for rejections.  It’s the only way forward.