There are no fat pigs in sight but there was a fat envelope when I sent “Bloodie Bones” off to TLC. But this was where I came unstuck as I sent the first three chapters and calculated I had a couple of weeks to type up the last few amendments before anyone would be close to asking for the rest of the novel. How wrong I was! Within a day TLC contacted to ask if I could send the full typescript.
Cue a frenzied couple of days when every spare minute was spent typing up the changes I’d hand-written on the manuscript. Even now that it’s done (and I can sleep again!) I’m not sure in hindsight if it was a good thing or not. At least I’d already done the amendments and the request from TLC required me to get it sorted and out instead of tinkering again and again with the text.
So now it’s done. I understand from TLC that they’ve already been in discussions with agents and have got two lined up to read “Bloodie Bones” which is great news as just getting someone to open a submission labelled horror can is tough.
I’m trying to be realistic about this. The agents are going to look at “Bloodie Bones”, that’s as far as the deal goes. No promises, no commitments, definitely no guarantees. But having the novel put in front of an agent who has already agreed to read it is a big step forward.
At this stage I know I should sit back, rest on my laurels, wait for the bidding war to start.
Yeah. Right.
So instead I’ve moved onto the novel I started writing in April and then put aside when interest in “Bloodie Bones” picked up in July. It’s tentatively called “The Lost” and it’s currently about 45,000 words in length. I read through the opening section at the weekend (mainly to remind myself what the story was….I knew the big picture but the details were lost) and it actually reads very well for a first draft (IMHO).
So here’s my big tip for anyone out there who’s finished a novel and it’s out there in the big wide world looking to hook an agent. Write something else. It would be easy to focus on “Bloodie Bones”, wondering whether anyone has read it, what they think about it. Immersing myself in “The Lost” takes the edge off that.
A little bit… I’d be lying if I said I don’t still have those thoughts and maybe check my email box a little more frequently than usual.
