Exciting Discovery for Christian and/or Australian Unpublished Authors

Well, am continuing in my search for places to submit my manuscript, in case I just happen to get rejected by the first few (which would totally never happen to me, just all those other not so good authors, like J.K. Rowlings).

And as I'm going along, I thought I would share some of the places I've found in case other people are interested. Once I feel I've gone through and exhausted most of the options, I'll do a summary blog post. But you might as well read this blog post now that you are here.

Today I submitted to Pan McMillan's Manuscript Monday (who take unsolicited manuscripts on Mondays), as well as to the American Christian Literary Agent Steve Laube (I had to do a query letter for first).

A friend then pointed out that I should check out Allen and Unwin (another of Australia's biggest publishers). And guess what? They accept unsolicited manuscripts on Fridays for The Friday Pitch! So, guess what I'll be doing on Friday. (though can't work out if it has to be submitted only on Fridays, or they only check their emails on Fridays. Pan McMillan made it very clear it had to be submitted on Monday between 10 am and something like 4pm, but not so clear for Allen and Unwin). Am glad that the big houses do still take some unsolicited manuscripts. I know that it will be read super quickly by an unpaid intern, but they promise that it will at least be read. 

My other discovery today was Authonomy run by Harper Collins. I found it because it was recommended by Zondervan. Previously I've mentioned Christian Manuscript Submission which I thought I would try if my other options fell through. This is a website where you can upload a proposal for 6 months, with a fee of $98 (USD I assume). It is supposedly browsed by a lot of the big publishing houses in the US looking for Christian material.

Authonomy is pretty similar, except it's free, based in the UK and is run by one of the big publishing houses. Also, it has this strange process of recommendations by readers which I'm still working out.

Anyway, it's free and might bring my manuscript to the attention of more people, which can only be a good thing (I think, feel free to tell me otherwise). And it's covering the UK, which I haven't done yet. 

So, yah for free stuff!

Once I test it out a bit more, if I discover anything more useful about it I'll let you know. 

As to my own writing: spent quite a bit of time dancing around my apartment and cleaning it (can now see most of the kitchen bench which is super cool). Also rather annoyingly found out that you shouldn't put a newly serviced bike on white carpet. Didn't even think about the oil. And carpet cleaner is not really cutting it. Any cleaning advice welcome.

But what has this to do with writing? Okay, you caught me, not much. This is made slightly more embarrassing as I gave a talk at work today on Time Management and staying focused.  The talk went really well actually, in that my colleagues didn't want to stone me for being a pretentious prat, which I was afraid of. Whether it actually speeds up work is yet to be seen. (And if anyone from work is reading this blog at work, I'm really glad you are reading this, but bad assessor, bad!)

Though, after I cleaned my apartment, tried to save my carpet, had dinner and did some researching into manuscript submissions, I started work on my new draft - The Secret Railway. 

Side note: I googled the title to make sure that it wasn't already a book, because it just sounded like such a good title I couldn't believe it would still be free. Turns out it is the name of a Canadian anime series in French from like the late 1970's. As I am pretty sure my readers won't get it confused, I'm sticking with my title until someone sues me. Though, the anime did look rather cute and interesting. There was some on Youtube, though I haven't looked at it yet, saving that for later procrastination.

Anyway, my Secret Railway is the children's story that I came up with after waking up from a dream. The dream itself was rather scary and dark, but has given me an idea for a rather sweet and hopefully interesting middle grades story. 

So I started off planning to just write up the brief outline I had from my notebook (sleeping with notebook next to head pays off!), but got carried away and have been writing out the chapters in rather a lot of detail, and then got caught up in bits of dialogue, etc as I went along. I now have it planned out in detail until chapter 8 (2,000 words of plan, which for me is a lot), I think that is 1/3 of the way through the book. Though I might have just worked out all the easy bits. But still, the rest will hopefully come to me. 

Tomorrow I will start writing it out in full and see how I go.

Will put up a brief synopsis on the synopses page, though might have to leave the ending ambiguous... well, more ambiguous than synopses usually are, that is. 

Good Night and Sleep Tight.

 

General Update.

So, have given up on the whole giving up caffeine. First of all, it's amazingly boring. There is so little that you can drink except for herbal teas. Second, I used to have a cup of coffee in my second hour of writing, and now that I've stopped, I've dropped down from 2,000 words to 1,000 words per hour. It's a pretty big difference. It might not be the caffeine (as I'm still drinking Jasmine tea which has quite a bit), but anything that might possibly help or even give me a placebo effect I'm utilizing. (What is this placebo? Where can we find it? Maybe it's over in this truck marked 'Killer Bees'! Ah, the Simpsons).

Writing-wise... not going at all well. Working at half speed for less hours somehow does not result in more words. Go figure. Up to a grand total of 12,000 words for this story and am a week (ie. halfway) in. The problem is I don't know why it is going slow (when I'm sitting down and writing. I understand why it's not as long as it should be in that I've been busy with family stuff.) I know the characters well enough, I have more plotted out in my head than I usually do, I'm giving it free reign to be as ridiculously corny as it can be, and yet it is just coming out at half speed. Where is my flow? Muse, why have you deserted me?

On a completely different note woke up this morning from a vivid dream with a really great idea for a children's book. Noted it all down, but restrained myself from starting on it straight away. Once I've finished this fortnight I'll decide whether to jump to it or the one that's planned (which also happens to be a children's story, an Australian fairytale, sort of a cross between Dot and Kangaroo and Alice in Wonderland.)

While my writing isn't going all that well, I have managed to send off query letters to two literary agents and to one publisher directly. Am going to wait and see if I get any useful feedback along with the rejection letters before sending out a few more. But boy, trying to get a Young Adult, Christian series published when you are an overseas writer (to America, obviously they are the overseas agents to me) is really difficult. I found one publisher that specalised in young adult Christian works, but they wanted absolutely no profanity. I have a handful of swear words dotted through out, because my main character and her friends are all non-Christian to begin with. There is not a secular Aussie teenager alive that does not use the lesser swear words, and to take them out would be inauthentic. I played with the idea, and knew this might be a problem for an American Christian market, but still don't think I can do it.

A lot of publishers and literary agents appear to refer to Christian Manuscript Submissions, which is a website that allows you (for a fee, of course) to upload your proposal and sample chapters and then agents and the big publishing houses refer to it from there. Don't suppose anyone has heard of it and have reviews/feedback about it?

I thought I would wait until I've been rejected a few times, and then look into it.

Oh, but life is not all bad. I'm still working on the whole lifestyle of a writer and so on Friday (while unsuccessfully trying to avoid my house cleaner, as I had absolutely no idea what time she usually came) I went out for breakfast and read Dorothea while eating at Laurent (beautiful French patisserie near my house.)

  

Green tea with a ham and cheese croissant and an almond croissant to finish. Perfect. (Well, didn't actually help the writing, but you can't have everything!)

Final words: am halfway through Dorothea's Wake Up and Live, and other than the great 1930's psychology and self-help nature, it has given me some interesting ideas to think about. She sets a challenge of just trying out her theory (no, am not going to spoil it by giving it away... just yet). So, I'll finish the book to make sure that it doesn't go super weird and report back on how the challenge goes for me, but I highly recommend you read it if you are feeling in a bit of a life rut.

And just a reminder: you have two days left to enter the Pre-Giveaway Giveaway! It's open to absolutely everyone, anywhere in the world. At the moment I'm loving the comments, so might have to put all names in a hat because I can't differentiate based on merit.