Once More Unto The Breach!

The title of this blog post is clearly an attempt to get myself excited about something that is generally soul-sucking and deflating: the quest for the elusive receptive literary agent.

I sent 20 queries out for Justice for the Dead (and already got back 2 rejection letters!), but even that was enough to get the anxieties fluttering, the heart pounding, and the blood pressure approaching critical. I'm not sure what makes this process so difficult for me; I'm fairly certain it's not the rejection, although that's no fun either, but regardless, sending queries out sets my teeth on edge.

The damnable thing is that I think this is the best book I've written thus far; it's an appropriately publishable length; it's got some elements of en vogue items and genres; and I do have some publication credits for fiction. In my last blog post, I told you a bit about my publication history or lack thereof, but all the writing work I've been doing in the past ten years or so has been building to this round of queries. Perhaps it's not just this book, but so much of what I've done in the past few years being poured into this endeavor that makes it a harrowing process. Time will tell.

On the theme of doing things that scare the hell out of me, I went ahead and Facebook messaged my favorite composers, Two Steps from Hell, to let them know that I dedicated a book to them. I don't know why that would scare the hell out of me as they will with near 100% certainty ignore my message, but somehow it took me two weeks to drum up the courage to do so.

That's it for this week, I think. Movement II of Manic Sonata is almost done, but I can't print it until I get Heretic done as well. Publishing Manic Sonata would give me a number of books that makes this triskaidekaphobic sweat. If I release Manic Sonata and Heretic simultaneously we will bypass that problem, going straight to 14. Ah, neuroses.