How 'Set went from first draft to publication
Since it’s coming up for a couple of months since 'Set was released, I thought it’d be interesting to blog about its journey from first draft to publication. So come with me back to a dark and mysterious time full of wonder and magic and hope for the future. Well, 2007, actually. Remember it? All those slightly bigger mobile phones. Wow. Far out.
Anyway, I’d written five novels and one novella by that point. Three of the novels were 100k + word fantasies and, to be honest, were a bit amateurish. I still think they have glimpses of potential, but overall, they were fairly poor. After writing a novella that wasn’t fantasy at all, I had the urge to go for something bigger…something exploring death and all its terrible power. I jotted down a few ideas; they grew into an outline and a few of the characters came along at the same time. When it came to the main character, Emma, I had a mental picture of who she looked like (if you’ve seen Dog Soldiers, you’ll know who) so that, strangely enough, helped with her character. With the basics sorted, I got stuck in. Now, I was a slower writer then than I am these days so that first draft took me a good six months compared to my current average of about two. After it’d been through various edits, re-writes and polishes, the time came for that favourite of established and beginner writers alike.
Submission.
And just as it had been with anything else I subbed before 'Set, it went precisely nowhere. There might been two or three requests for the whole book based on the opening chapters, but no more than that. The vast majority of my queries were met with either silence or ‘thanks, but not for me.’ So I gave it a polish and tried again. Still nothing. Another polish and out again. That round, it got an offer of publication from a tiny American publisher with a promise of a contract ‘soon’. The contract never came and the last I heard, that publisher went down the pan, so no great loss there. Still, my book had a bit of decent feedback, so I gave it yet another polish and subbed to a London based agency. And here’s the fun part: after people left the company and their replacements either lost my sub or didn’t get back to me or asked me to re-send or were abducted by aliens, a lot of time passed with me working on another book and wondering if 'Set would ever get anywhere. Eventually, an apologetic email came my way: it’d been lost again, but if I resubbed, they’d ensure it went to the top of the pile. Plenty of people would have not bothered by this stage, but being a writer means knowing when to quit and then carrying on, anyway, so off the book went. The rejection, complete with detailed feedback, arrived a couple of weeks later.
That agency experience took two and a half years.
Two and a half years of emailing, waiting, emailing again, more waiting, writing more books, leaving the first decade of the twenty-first century, writing more and so on. Of course, there was only one thing I could do: read through it, polish it again and send it out once more.
It sold to Musa about a month later.
So what can you take from that? Either I’m too stupid to know when to give up on a book or that it sometimes takes a long time for a story to find a home. Or both.
That’s how 'Set went from first draft to being published in a six year journey of emails, rejections, silence, lost files and rewrites. And lots and lots of coffee.
Anyway, I’d written five novels and one novella by that point. Three of the novels were 100k + word fantasies and, to be honest, were a bit amateurish. I still think they have glimpses of potential, but overall, they were fairly poor. After writing a novella that wasn’t fantasy at all, I had the urge to go for something bigger…something exploring death and all its terrible power. I jotted down a few ideas; they grew into an outline and a few of the characters came along at the same time. When it came to the main character, Emma, I had a mental picture of who she looked like (if you’ve seen Dog Soldiers, you’ll know who) so that, strangely enough, helped with her character. With the basics sorted, I got stuck in. Now, I was a slower writer then than I am these days so that first draft took me a good six months compared to my current average of about two. After it’d been through various edits, re-writes and polishes, the time came for that favourite of established and beginner writers alike.
Submission.
And just as it had been with anything else I subbed before 'Set, it went precisely nowhere. There might been two or three requests for the whole book based on the opening chapters, but no more than that. The vast majority of my queries were met with either silence or ‘thanks, but not for me.’ So I gave it a polish and tried again. Still nothing. Another polish and out again. That round, it got an offer of publication from a tiny American publisher with a promise of a contract ‘soon’. The contract never came and the last I heard, that publisher went down the pan, so no great loss there. Still, my book had a bit of decent feedback, so I gave it yet another polish and subbed to a London based agency. And here’s the fun part: after people left the company and their replacements either lost my sub or didn’t get back to me or asked me to re-send or were abducted by aliens, a lot of time passed with me working on another book and wondering if 'Set would ever get anywhere. Eventually, an apologetic email came my way: it’d been lost again, but if I resubbed, they’d ensure it went to the top of the pile. Plenty of people would have not bothered by this stage, but being a writer means knowing when to quit and then carrying on, anyway, so off the book went. The rejection, complete with detailed feedback, arrived a couple of weeks later.
That agency experience took two and a half years.
Two and a half years of emailing, waiting, emailing again, more waiting, writing more books, leaving the first decade of the twenty-first century, writing more and so on. Of course, there was only one thing I could do: read through it, polish it again and send it out once more.
It sold to Musa about a month later.
So what can you take from that? Either I’m too stupid to know when to give up on a book or that it sometimes takes a long time for a story to find a home. Or both.
That’s how 'Set went from first draft to being published in a six year journey of emails, rejections, silence, lost files and rewrites. And lots and lots of coffee.
No comments have been added yet.
