This is mainly a proof of life post. I’m not dead yet.

The last few months have mainly been waiting for responses/rejections from submissions (still 2 agents from the last batch to hear from, and Angry Robot). During which time I’ve been doing revision passes on the other in-progress works.

Until my depression slowed that down into a useless exercise. It turned out the solution was writing another new novel, this time a psychological thriller about depression. Which at least got me writing, even if I do now have six novels in various stages of progress (and I’ve started on an outline for another).

I also wrote a short story for an anthology that put out a call. And if it’s rejected by that one, there’s another anthology I noticed with a call out whose theme it could fit.

 

My current list of novels in progress or just waiting are:

All Roads Lead to Hell – Finished, but too short for most traditional submission routes, so just hanging about.

Border Guards series:

The Border Guard – currently undergoing submission;
(unnamed book 2) – some revisions done, but waiting to see what happens with book 1 before going any further;
(unnamed book 3) – same here.

Broken – This is the psychological thriller I did last month. I’ve done some polishing, but I think it’s in reasonable condition. I’ll go back to it in another couple of weeks to see what else it needs.

Dwimmerfall (working title) – this has been in progress for a few years now. I’ve done it one section at a time, working out the next part of the story only after writing the previous one, and have three parts done. The fourth, and probably final, part is in outlining, but I still need to work out what actually happens. Also, I’m trying to work in ideas suggested by a panel at Bristolcon, but I’m having trouble integrating them.

Ghost Bullets series:

The Ghost Gun – it’s had a few rounds of revisions, and I’m not sure what else it needs done;
The Redacted Man – much the same state;
The Abyssal Box – I have a rough outline, but it needs more to it. I need more thinking time on this.

 

For the foreseeable future I’ll mainly be pottering with these while waiting for responses, and maybe hammering out the outlines to get the other stuff written. Then maybe trying to research more agents to submit. If I have no success with the traditional publishing route, I may just publish it all next year. If I can get Dwimmerfall done, the existing three parts are all over 50k words, so I may split them up into small novels. That way I could potentially publish a novel every month for the year.

Since they’re unlikely to do any better than any of my previous novels without some other factor in play, this isn’t the optimal approach. But if I can’t get anywhere with the trad pub route, then I’m currently at a loss for what else to try.

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