Ripples in Speculative Fiction

Prepping the alternate-history steampunk novel for novel submission is done. Like many of my projects, it wrapped up unexpectedly and with much relief. I’m heartened by the fact that every time I read it, that I still like it and think it’s good. A lot of times after the fifth plus read through, I get so sick of a novel it starts to make my head hurt. This novel wasn’t like that. I got tired of it at times for sure, but I still always really liked it. So, I have some hopes.

Now I need to comb through the agent listings to find an agent that will be a good fit for both the book and myself. This does not look to be an enjoyable task, mainly since it’s tedious, boring, mind-numbing work that takes away from actual writing. There are a lot of factors to consider before approaching an agent, and good-ole-fashioned excel seems to be about the only way to get it all down to a manageable amount of data to sort through and rank-order. A quick five-minute search on one website that lists agents listed about 200 agents that might possibly fit the broad parameters I put in to match my book. That’s a lot to get through and only one website.

via GIPHY

I also decided at the start of the year, that I’d drop my already sparse blogging schedule from first and third Saturday a month to just the first Saturday. I don’t have as much time as I’d like to dedicate to writing (such that I don’t think I’ve hit the 10 hour a week target once this year so far) and writing a blog post sucks down time much better spent elsewhere. Once a month is as low as I’ll go, since I do like posting at least that much for myself for posterity and goal tracking reasons.

Now all I need to do is decide what the next project is ….