by Mary Sutton / @mary_sutton73
It’s almost the end of the first quarter of 2016 and I realized I haven’t blogged about anything since Cyber Monday of 2015. Except for book reviews. So maybe I should change that.
You’ll also notice I haven’t done goals for 2016. Why not? Well, I’m not sure what they should be. Yes, even this late into the year (relatively speaking). Usually I’ve got my act together by now. This year, I’m still herding all the players around backstage trying to figure things out.
(By the way. I could have used a lot of different images for “progress.” But this one spoke to me. Because sometimes, it’s how I feel. I’m way at the bottom of a huge spiral staircase. I can see the top – but I just can’t. Get. There. From. Here.)
So here’s where I am with my various writing-related efforts.
The Laurel Highlands Mysteries
I am continuing to query And Corruption for All. It’s been…slow. I got a request for the full manuscript back in November, but no word back yet. I got a very encouraging rejection from an agent with the invitation to revise and resubmit the query. I did, but I haven’t heard on that yet, either.
Do you get the feeling that publishing moves at a glacial pace? Good.
I’ve got about two and a half months left on my self-imposed “give it a year” deadline. I’ll re-evaluate where I am at the end of May. Meanwhile, I’ve written the second book in the series (and I’m not going to share the title because it sucks) and I’m running that through my critique group. I’ve plotted the third book. So I consider myself in a good place no matter what happens – an offer of representation or I decide to self-publish. Because I do believe in these books and I want to share them with the world.
So, we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, you dear reader are in a perfect position to get caught up with all the backstory by reading Murder Most Scenic, the collection of short stories (sorry for the hard sell, but it has to be done sometimes).
The Jackson Davis/Niagara Falls Mysteries
I have no idea if this would be the name of the series, but I’ll go with it for now.
I’ve submitted the first book, now call Shattered Sight, for a contest. I should get the results at the end of the month. Meanwhile, I’m working on the pitch and synopsis for the Pennwriters conference in May. I have requested an agent pitch session, and it’s my intention to start the wonderful query process over again, except for this book.
In the meantime, ideas are percolating for the next book in this series. An idea that might require me to visit my alma mater, St. Bonaventure. Oh, the horror. What us writers won’t do for our stories (and if you haven’t picked up on the irony, I’d love a reason to visit Bona’s – and my girl is starting to research colleges to it’ll be killing two birds with one stone).
Hero’s Sword
In the fall of 2015, I moved all of these books over to Smashwords. At the beginning of the year, I set Power Play to free on all platforms (except Kindle because — Amazon). Since the beginning of the year, I’ve given away 85 books, the vast majority through iBooks (huh?). Just today, I checked my Smashwords dashboard and I sold all five books in the rest of the series. Also through iBooks (again, huh?). Yay! Presumably this means someone downloaded and loved the first book, so they went out and bought the others. I also sold two print books this month through Amazon.
One can only hope it’s the beginning of a trend.
So good news: Power Play is getting out there and (hopefully) I’m spreading the word. Bad news: the series is still on hold pending my ability to justify the associated expense of publication. Good news: my cover artist has returned to freelancing and would be available for the cover design of book 7 (which is written and only needs to be edited). So no need to rebrand the series (Which is good, because a lot of people love those covers. As do I.).
Other stuff
I have two short story mysteries (both using completely different characters) out for consideration for two anthologies, one from the Sister in Crime Guppies chapter, and one from (gulp) Bouchercon 2016. Fingers crossed.
And there you have it. I’m still writing, and submitting and…waiting at the bottom of that staircase. In the meantime, I’ll try to blog more regularly. And not just book reviews.
I hope.
Image by Ricardo Cuppini; used under Creative Commons license