Chris Fritz's Blog - Posts Tagged "publishing"

The road I went down to publish my debut fantasy novel the Universe Key was an arduous and confusing one. At first I tried the obvious route of traditional publishing. This lead to an extremely long and painful list of rejection emails from companies and literary agents. Oh for months it was just rejections as far as the eye could see. Mountains on mountains of rejections. If I had a dollar for every rejection I received then I could just skip publishing and finance a movie based on my novel. I think it could have been for the better though. I don't want just any run of the mill literary agent. I need an agent that understands my visions and wants me to achieve my goals. An agent almost as unique as me. That is just something that money can't buy. I also did talk to some vanity publishers with hilarious results. I swear all those vanity presses should be shut down, they're scams one and all. I did have the chance to show them how I really felt though. Any sleazy con artist who sent me an email or called me on the phone got a permanent headache worth of tolling from yours truly. So watch out for scams guys. Two companies I'll name are Dorrance publishing and Fulton books. Avoid them like they just tested positive for COVID 19. So with all my options seemingly exhausted where was I to go? It seemed like my last hope was indie publishing. I started off as a true novice in the indie publishing world. I only stumbled head first into how I could self publish on amazon. But the moment I hit the button and published the Universe Key I realized something. I absolutely love indie publishing. I love editing down and formatting what I wrote. I love designing my own covers and once I published the Universe Key I had this calming peaceful feeling wash over me. A feeling that told me now I can publish anything I want whenever I want to. That is the feeling of freedom. Now to end this blog post I have a message to the literary agents of the world. Get off your 15% taking butt and sign me already. So I can finally bring excitement, prosperity and wonder into your short meaningless life.

Little side note I'll give you guys an update of what I'm working on. I'm 80k words into the sequel to the Universe Key. I still have a lot to write so I think I'm going to hit 100k words.

I've written a sequel to my first novel. The new book is called the Well of Destruction and it takes place exactly where the Universe Key left off. This is my covid-19 book. I've been gifted with some extra time to write recently and this is the end result, congratulations lucky readers. I have to say that with this new book I think I've outdone myself. Critics might say that some sequels don't live up to the original but I say this objectively that this second book takes all the greatest things from the first book and cranks them up to eleven. You guys are going to have so much fun reading the continued adventures of Brilan, Clara and the rest of the group. Also in my writing process I've come up with a name for this series. I'm calling it the Magic Metal War. What do you think of it let me know in the comments. Now I'm not ready to release the book just yet, I need to go through my extensive editing process and I need to design a cover. But I am ready to give you guys a little sample of what I've been writing.

“Are we there yet?” Clara asks Brilan.
“No.” Brilan says shortly.
“Are we there yet?” Clara asks again.
“No.” Says Brilan
“Are we there yet?” Clara asks.
“No.” Brilan says.
“Are we there yet?” Clara asks.
“No. Are we there yet?” Brilan spurts out in a moment of reversal.
“No.” Clara says instinctually. “Hey you messed me up!” Cara says as her annoying farce is unraveled.
“Hey I can play games too. I can keep it up all day. Just try me.” Brilan tells his sister to put an end to her annoyance.
“But I’m bored and hungry.” Clara wines to her brother. “When are we gonna…” Clara tries to wine more but she is interrupted when a ten foot tall Ferean comes stomping out of the trees and into the path that the siblings walk. Adrenaline pumps through the hearts of the kids as they see the beast that threatens them.
“RRRRREEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!!!!” The ferean calls out as he finds his young prey.
“CLARA DUCK STAY HIDDEN!” Brilan yells to his sister as he draws the universe key and gets in between her and the ferean. Brilan pushes his sister away into a bush aggressively encouraging her to stay away from this horror. The monster swipes at Brilan with one of its claws and he bats it back with the universe key. The young Zaubator must quickly defend against the attacks, come up with a strategy to kill it and keep Clara safe all at the same time. He keeps bashing at the beast with his key but after a few hit he can’t keep it up. The ferean uses one of his claws to swipe Brilans feet out from under him. The boy falls to the ground as the ferean looms over him.

Pretty suspenseful right? I'm going to tentatively say that this whole thing will be out by the end of the year so you'll have to wait a little bit to see how this part gets wrapped up. I'll tell you right now it's worth the wait.

So I recently joined a platform called Wattpad. For those of you who don't know what it is it's a place where writers can post stories that they have written and for readers to read those fiction stories. I see it as way for people to get exposed to what I've written. Before I joined I heard mixed things about Wattpad. I've heard some people say that it's not a good place to get exposure and I've heard other people say it's a place for poorly written fan fiction. Like really a lot of bad stories are being published there mostly about Harry Potter having sex with Draco. So the question here is why would I join this platform if I heard bad things about it? Well I was listening to an interview with George R R Martin and he was asked to give some advice to new writers. His advice boiled done to before you write a full length novel start out writing short stories and try to get them published in literary magazines. That will give you a better foundation in writing fiction and maybe you'll even build a fanbase. That advice is absolute garbage because literary magazines have essentially dried up and gone the way of the dodo. They were probably popular when Martin was getting his start so advice like that would seem natural for him. Unfortunately times have changed. The internet has risen and changed the way we read. Enter Wattpad. Despite its criticisms to does have a lot of users and it has done its best to create a platform for engaging with users as well as become a place to publish short fiction in an official professional capacity. Nowadays if you want to publish short fiction there are barely any traditional publishing routes to do so. Wattpad might have just well replaced those literary magazines the Martin spoke so highly of. Plus I do feel a freedom of being able to publish any bit of writing I want. That's very appealing to me. The demon monkeys that live in my hair will finally have their message heard. So if I feel I want to start writing about the sex lives of Harry Potter characters then I write to my hearts content. And who knows maybe somebody will enjoy what I've written about the sex lives of Harry Potter characters so much that they'll check out my original works and then I've gained some new fans. Oh well wish me luck and if you're on what pad right now and you want to follow me here's a link https://www.wattpad.com/user/chrisfri...

Till next time
Peace