Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing Proposal: Take 2

So now I’m back to working on my proposal for the sequel to Dream With Little Angels, a book called Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing which I think is stronger than the first.

At one time, I had the proposal completely finished and sent it off to my agent for review before sending it off to Kensington for their approval. However, it would seem my tactic of taking sections of the text that I didn’t feel like figuring out in advance and simply blocking them out in the synopsis with phrases like “The mystery grows here with suspense and intrigue,” didn’t slip past her eagle eye vision.

So she made me go back and actually flesh out the whole story, even though I complained that I think leaving some aspects of the story to work themselves out organically during the writing process makes for a much fresher finished project. I still believe that’s true, although I must admit my intentions may have been driven more by laziness and less by some sort of altruistic belief system. Besides, when I told her this, she had a valid point: I’m not really tied down to what I put in the proposal. Just make it work and if something better comes along while I’m crafting the story, go with it.

Actually, once I sat down and started carving out the missing parts I found some pretty golden stuff. I don’t think anything better is going to come along. It might polish up, but I think I managed to hit a pretty nice treasure trove already. This book’s going to be very rich with story and characters and have a lot more backstory I can draw on if I need to, but the nice thing is I don’t HAVE to.

So now I have to go back through my proposal and insert all the new stuff I came up with; the backstory and the scenes and make sure it all flows together nicely and sells itself the way it should. Hopefully that won’t take too long. This is one of two proposals I’m shopping right now. I’m still waiting to hear back from my agent on the other proposal. I think it’s pretty solid. I’m just as excited about that book as I am about Cry.

Well, maybe that’s not true. Maybe Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing is a little closer to my heart only because it’s in the same world as Dream With Little Angels;

Once again, it takes place in the south. Same mythical Alabama town. Alvin, population: almost none. Same main characters. Most of the story is told from the point of view of the now-twelve-year-old son of the town’s only detective (he was eleven in the first book). I say most of the book. In Dream I had every scene from his point of view and, looking back, it was just too constrictive. From here on in, I’m going to tell as much as I can from first person, but cut away when I have to and go into third person. It just gives me a lot more flexibility and cracks my ability to work new things into the story wide open.

All of this adds up to me being very excited about the prospect of this new book. I love writing these characters. Especially twelve-year-old Abe and his friend Dewey. I can write them for hours and never get bored. I honestly don’t know where they’re going to take me until I sit down and just let them start talking with their southern accents and Dewey’s absolutely drop-dead stupid ideas.

I hope y’all will pick up a copy of Dream With Little Angels when it comes out in July 2013. It’s a pretty tragic book as far as a mystery goes, but it’s got some fun parts in it as well.

Michael out.