Writing Processes – Part 12: The Publishing Contract

At the point at which the publishing contract from Lyrical Press arrived last year, I had two finished novels working the submission/rejection circuit. One was the horror novel SUFFER THE CHILDREN, finished in 2004. The other was the amateur sleuth novel DEATH SCENE, finished in 2007.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN took ten years to write, as I've mentioned before. I was somewhat dismayed to discover, when I did finally finish it and send it out on the submission circuit, that in those ten years the p...