Plate from when I designed Night of the Living Dead for Stage One

So here’s the scoop on my first book, Ghost in the Park, a supernatural thriller in 72k-ish words. It took me about 2 months to write then a few weeks tweaking. It has been beta read by Brian and amazing fellow writer friend Nancy. My dad is currently reading it, which tickles me. So far, all who have read it have reached a point where they had trouble putting it down, and stayed up too late reading. That makes me do a little happy dance. It’s not a thriller if it’s easy to put down.

So far I have queried over twenty agents. I had two requests for partial manuscripts, both ultimately rejected. I’ve had nine rejections to date. Only one was a form letter, and all the rest contained some very kind comments. One agent called my writing “poised and polished” but said that it wasn’t his cup of tea. In fact, so many of the rejections have said something like “I’m sure that you’ll find an agent, but this isn’t the right book for me” that I don’t know if the book is good, or this is just the polite thing agents say right now.

I have had two requests for full manuscripts, and am waiting to hear back. Both agents who have requested the full are a bit iffy when researched on line. Not outright scammers, but seem like second tier agents. As an unpublished author, I don’t expect to get the notice of the big boys, so I haven’t ruled these two out. We’ll just have to see if either like the book enough to sign me, and then what the contract entails.

Nine rejections so far. It is rumored that Stephen King received 200 rejections before publishing Carrie, and had a spike on his wall to hang them up. I keep telling Brian that I need a spike…

In other writing news, I am brushing up a short story that I am submitting to my sister’s small publishing company, Das Krakenhaus. http://www.daskrakenhaus.com They are currently accepting short stories of less than 12k words in apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian, as well as Scientific Romanticism (H.G. Wells / Jules Verne) and Steampunk. So if any fellow writers are interested, head out to their website to submit a story.

When I get that short story finished, maybe I’ll post it here. It’s called Winter, and is a post-apocalyptic short.

After Winter is polished, I have to decide what I’m continuing next. I have two books started. The sequel to Ghost, which is titled Ghost in the Classroom, or a paranormal romance titled Wyrd House in honor of a group I used to belong to when I lived in Indy. I could use a little break from Ghost, so maybe the romance novel is a good idea. Not to mention that it’s a good genre to try to get published.