My brother would not want me to sit still and mourn. Or is that a selfish excuse to keep moving, keep fighting? Survivors’ guilt is a bitch, folks. It sinks in claws and never quite lets go, and makes us second-guess all our impulses.
Anyhow, if I want to go anywhere in publishing fiction, it’s time to reckon with some hard truths:
I’m done with the agent hunt for the Lonhra Sequence books. It’s been a decade since I woke up out of a terrible H1N1 fever with exactly the right way to continue a stalled fantasy novel.
Long-term agent representation didn’t happen for that book, or the later books MORO’S PRICE and THE PURIST. Since those books are woven into a larger, loosely connected series, they are no longer agent-bait. Unless the series turns out to sell ridiculously well, no agent will touch it. And if it sells well, I probably won’t need a FT agent anyway. If I go back into the agent query game, it will be for unrelated and standalone works. I will not tell you exactly how many queries I put out over the last ten years for three different books, but it’s well over 500. Any reputable agent who said ‘yes’ to any of my future works, has already said ‘no’ to the earlier stuff…and I’d be wondering at their change of heart. I’m still much the same writer I was in 2009, barring a tiny advancement in skill.
I’m done with trying to break into the Big 5 commercial Science Fiction & Fantasy publishers. Most require agent representation (see above) or have extremely long wait times just in the slush pile. I know folks who’ve had manuscripts on the ‘buy’ pile at major genre publishers for years…just to have those books dropped at the last minute. Or worse, signed to contract, then dropped at book two or three.
Yay, it’s so nice that SFF literary agents and Big 5 publishers are finally seeing the light on LGBTQIA representation beyond token side characters, *and* that sex can have a place in mainstream SFF, not just romance and crossovers. But I was there in 2009-2012. Many of the same agents who said ‘Ewww, gay and bi main characters having sex as part of the SFF plot? Nope!’ are now fierce, edgy champions of the same. Meh. At least I’ll have interesting books to read sometime in the next three years.
Frankly, I’m probably just not skilled enough a writer for the Big 5, or quirky enough, or lucky enough. (It’s hard to Know People when you are a hermit and introvert.)
I’m probably done with seeking out new small-press publishers. I still love NineStar Press dearly, and owe them a couple of books, but the bulk of my fiction from here out will be self-published. Small-press erotic romance and crossover SFF publishers flourished in the gaps between commercial genres (and their psychological hangups) starting in the early 2000s. Ellora’s Cave started because the Mills & Boon-type romance publishers were deathly afraid of openly graphic sex on the page. SFF & romance crossovers went BIG in the paranormal romance field, and paved the way for hundreds of smaller copycats and well-meant homages.
Amazon, easy self-publishing, increasing openness from big commercial publishers, and the endemic incompetence and greed of many small-press romance publishers lead to an ongoing mass extinction. I won’t even look at a small publisher now unless they’ve survived three years since launch and over 45% of their catalog shows Amazon sales ranks of lower than 100,000. That’s a damn unicorn, folks.
Self-publishing is a scary skill to learn, but I have giants in the field willing to teach me bits and pieces. I’ve seen how canny self-publishing has saved the backlists, homes, and even lives of many favorite 1980s & 1990s SFF writers. I’ve also seen what a cesspool self-publishing can be, when hitched to ghostwriters, outright plagiarism, and deceptive marketing practices.
Now that I have a Real Job. I can save up enough money for cover design and editing, which are the real costs of self-publishing-done-right. Responsible marketing comes later.
Remember that book that stalled out in 1997, lay dormant until 2009, and roared back to life? It was on Wattpad for a while as BLOODSHADOW, but I’ll be self publishing a slightly different version sometime next year.
The cover will be some variation of this.
