Can We Do It? Publishing Journey Week 1...and Some Guy's Abs

 Hello there everyone!

I hope your Fourth of July weekend was fun and patriotic. 'MERICA.

This week I've made a video! But don't worry; if you don't feel like watching my face I am typing it up here for you. Although you'll miss the abs without the video. And the bloopers at the end. I love bloopers.

So basically, because I'm starting at square one with finding an agent for Plane Walker, I thought it might be (mildly?) interesting if I shared my journey and everything with you all. Lunula was picked up by a publisher once already, and Plane Walker is a dang good book. So my hopes for finding an agent are, at this early stage, high-ish. I'd really like to see that happen! I think an agent would be good for this work in particular, as its not something I'm keen to self-publish, and I'd like to see what markets to can be thrown into.

Week 1 of Publishing Plane Walker!

1.) It's fully written.

2.) It's in the last editing phase with a couple copy editors going through it.

3.) One query has been sent to Trident Media Group. It's been about a month and no response, so I'm thinking that's a bust. REJECTION.

It's okay. We authors have to handle it.

Moving on to Untitled Romance Novel. This is something I'm in the middle of writing, but I'm going to use it like a guinea pig for this blog. I'd like to make a post in the near future where I try out a bunch of different book plotting methods. Crazy ones like story boards and playdough. Then I'll take pictures and report back to you on what I thought.

Sounds interesting, right? Should be fun. If you think of any you want me to try, say so in the comments so I can add it to my list!

Last, but not least, you should really skip to like the middle of the video for this bit. I'm sharing my SUPER SECRET UNTITLED PROJECT with you. My co-author (*cough cough* mom) and I have just started the planning phase, but we're utilizing some cool planning methods I thought would be better captured on film than described.

And then there's that guy's abs. Don't forget the abs.

Okay, okay, fine if you REALLY don't want to watch the video, here is the system in a nutshell. We have one notebook with all the detailed information like characters (personalities, ticks, background, notable facts, pictures, etc.) and a colored tab to represent each of them. And then place holders for each "chapter" so that we can write the chapters in rough draft form to start out with. To aid us in that, we also have a macro timeline so that we can write down big events so the little ones all line up and make sense. For all those random scenes we come up with while driving or doing the dishes? We have a wall of notecards--color coded of course--that we use to roughly line up sequence of events so they find a home in the overall plot.

Genius, right? It's going really well. We learned from doing Plane Walker, that the more detailed you are in plotting it all out ahead of time, the easier its going to be on both writers.

So there you have it. What are you working on right now? Share a link to your blog or website so I can visit you and say hello, too!