Fixed what I could.

All right.

I wrote a flash-forward prologue that is all action.

I moved some chapters around, not introducing the third thread until further into the book so there aren't so many characters coming at the reader all at once.

I've strengthened the motives of two of the main characters.

I put one character's chapter at the very end of part one.

I addressed all the smaller concerns -- mis-named characters, etc.

So...I think it's stronger. Maybe not kickass, but enough that if the agent/publishers are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and trust the book will be stronger by the end, they would be willing to take it.

If they don't have goodwill toward me, I'm probably out of luck anyway. There are almost as many disadvantages as there are advantages to dealing with the mainstream, so I'm not going to freak out about it.

The book is everything.

"It's a Trap!"

So I've made this a choice between sending off a proposal that may only be half as good as the final book will be.

Or to take a few months to research and write the final book.

The first choice risks that the agent/publisher will reject me based on something that might be better in the future.

The second choice is that I'll spend months on a book and this opportunity will fade. There is a timing to these things -- these guys seem ready for me now. Plus, I really do have other books that I feel like I need to finish first.

As in all things, I'm going to compromise.

I will take another week to ten days to try to get the 100 pages better.

As in all things, the closer a "deadline" comes, the easier it seems to be to extend it. When I set the deadline two weeks ago, it seemed twice as long as it needed to be. (I had the proposal written in the first week.)

Now that the deadline is actually here, waiting  another 10 days doesn't seem so bad.

The agent has told me he'll be happy with a "rough" proposal. But my immediate instincts are, "It's a Trap!"

This is just one of many possibilities for this agent -- easy for him to say that. But it's probably the one chance I'll have to make an initial impression, so I'd best be patient.

So I'm going to work on these 100 pages for a while longer. Maybe continue to write the book because often the later pages can influence the earlier pages.

And then send it off and get to work on The Darkness You Fear, as well as my November Novel Writing project, Snaked.

It ain't done until it's done.

I've mentioned before that I'm not really an outline writer; I discover the story through writing.

That probably goes double with trying to come up with a proposal.

I believe that a book should be judged by it's final version, that every version before that will probably be lacking, more or less. Often I come up with some of the best bits in a book at the last moment, sometimes I finalize the "voice" in the final version, making it consistent all the way through the book.

So this proposal I've come up with for the mainstream publisher is probably no better than half as good as it will end up being.

In other words, the "100 Kickass pages" isn't really possible for me.

My instincts are, given the current version, that the final book will be just fine, but it won't look fine until it's done.

So why don't I write the complete book and then send it off?  Because my intuition is that I don't have that much time. Plus, I have other commitments.

On the other hand, I might be burning bridges by sending something off that is not as good as it will be.

I'm going to work on this for the next few days, and then decide what to do.

Why mess with those guys?

A friend asked me, basically, why I'm even messing with the mainstream publishers, telling me that the path I've been on has been fruitful, and that I need to watch out.

I'm aware of the dangers. I have the same concerns.

Thing is, they came to me. Out of the blue. I'm being given the opportunity to skip all the preliminaries and going straight to the top, to the people who actually make the final decisions. (Someday, when all this has played out, I'll tell the whole story -- the bright opening, the slow responses, the opened door, and ... well, we'll see...)

So a door opened, and I just figured I'd be foolish to not at least poke my head in the door.

Truth is, though, that I'm almost too quirky for even the small publishers. I decided when I started writing that I would write what I want to write without regard to what others are looking for. Which means I have several books that seem not to fit anyone's categories.

This thriller I'm writing is right up my alley though. I mostly read thrillers and suspense these days. So the idea isn't foreign to me. But it is a challenge, and I'm not sure I'm up to it. That's not putting myself down. I think I'm a decent writer for what I do. This is just a harder hill to climb.

The biggest danger, as I've mentioned before, is being jerked around. (Again, easy for them to suggest constant changes with the attitude that maybe I'll produce something magical). My past experience has made me leery of that. Someone pointed out to me, once they've rejected you -- it becomes almost impossible for them to accept you, no matter how encouraging they sound.

So really, I want an acceptance or nothing at all.

I will have to have the courage to walk away.

But I think, because it isn't something I sought but something that came to me, because it is a bonus, and extra, that I might be able to say, "Thanks but no thanks."

Even if my proposal is accepted as is, and I'm totally aware the odds are low, (it doesn't cost them anything to dangle the possibilities in front of me), I'm going to tell them that it will be the first of the year before I can really get going, because I want to finish The Darkness You Fear and Snaked first.

Bottom line, I've got to do this on my own terms. I'm too old the play the game.



P.S. I do have the store as an example. About midway through my career I realized that I was neither making money nor having fun. Since I couldn't do much about the money part, I chose to make the store more pleasant.

I took a hit on earnings for a few years, but when the store built back up again, it was on my terms. And that has made all the difference. 

More Limpass than Kickass?

Read the first 20 pages of my "kickass 100 pages" at writer's group and, well -- they didn't kickass.

I asked for it. And they told me.

So back to the drawing board.



Slept on it. I think I can punch it up a little by starting with an action scene from toward the end of the book, and then flashing back.

If I change the order of chapters a little after that, and try to tighten them up, I should be able to get across what I'm trying to do.

I've always thought this book would benefit from research, but I'm not going to do the research without a contract, and maybe I can't get the contract without the benefit of research.

So it may not happen.

I just keep telling myself that's OK. This isn't my kind of book, ordinarily. I gave it a shot, but in some ways it would be a relief to go back to my previous way of doing things.

I still think the book is a good idea though. But if they can't see that...

The "Hot Hand."

For years, I've been touting the fact that there is no such thing as the "hot hand." No such thing as the "zone" that athletes talk about. It's an illusion.

That "career years" and "streaks" get rounded out by statistics.

Turns out, there is some doubt now about those studies. A mathematical error I don't understand.

So maybe there is such a thing as the baseball looking like a basketball to a baseball hitter, a hoop looking five feet wide after all.

Why did I tout this? Even though my intuition and instincts seem to tell me something different?

I think it was a way for me to reinforce persistence as the  most important attribute in any enterprise. The race doesn't always go to the swiftest, the smartest, the whatever, but to the guy who hangs in there, keeps trying, working, learning.

If you do it long enough, the statistics even out -- you'll have the "hot" month or year, just by an average result.

So for instance, my feeling was that if I wrote 30 books and they were consistently strong efforts, that statistically one of them would be "hot" just through the law of averages.

So now what?

Well, it doesn't make much difference, once I think about it.

It just means that if I write 30 books, that at some point along the way, I'll have a "hot hand." The same persistence applies. Heh.

Or it just proves I'm going to do what I'm going to do and I'll rationalize the reasons later. 

Nice to have choices.

Taking another full day off before diving in to the re-writing of the "100 Kickass pages."

I started to feel the grind lift a little yesterday, and realized I need that. I need to put the whole enterprise in perspective.

It's a flyer and need to remember it's a flyer. It isn't that big of a deal, one way or another.

Meanwhile, I need to get on with things. I had a nice little plan of getting a book out every four or five months, and thought Tuskers III was going to do that. I thought The Darkness You Fear would come four or five months after that.

But because of the publisher reboot of going into distribution, Tuskers III will be delayed at least six months.

I'm trying to decide if I want to go ahead and publish The Last Fedora: The Gangster Golem Chronicles myself. I love this book, but it doesn't seem fit into a nice genre category. I already have the editing done, and the cover is complete. There is nothing keeping me from putting it out. 

I'm going to sleep on it for a week or two, but I might very well do it.

I have a plethora of projects I want to finish, but I always want to leave the door open to new stories as well. Nice to have a choice though.