Staying the Course

I'm up to 40K in my current WiP, and things are going pretty well. Still averaging 1K a day and plotting each chapter before I write it. The world-building and character development have been a blast; it's a slow-burn post-apocalyptic western, and I'm dropping plenty of mysterious breadcrumbs along the way. If all goes according to plan, I'll be at 70K by the start of the next school year. Then I'll be lucky if I sling a few hundred words a day. But every step in the right direction is progress.

The current goal is to send this manuscript to Tor and Baen in December, and if they don't want it, I'll publish it myself. I've already got the cover art ready, just in case. My contact at Tor is the editor I worked with on Girl of Great Price. She's looked at a few of my other manuscripts over the years, and I've appreciated her feedback. My contact at Baen is the editor who updated me over the course of eight years while they kept BackTracker under consideration. Fingers crossed they won't take that long this time.

Am I having second thoughts about going full indie now that Amazon's algorithm has changed and the market is being inundated by AI-generated slop? Not at all. I'd rather my backlist be under my complete control, regardless. But I'm not going to limit myself to only one route. I never have. Do I regret firing my agent seven years ago? Nope. That was a bad decision from the start. I only went with him because he was the last name on a list of over a hundred agents who'd declined. He was willing to represent me, so I overlooked a few glaring warning signs at the get-go. Will I try snagging another agent at some point? I don't think so, but who knows?

Over the past sixteen years of my Journey through the Published Land, I've had a lot of good experiences and an equal amount of the other kind, but one thing that's remained constant is my passion for the process. I enjoy telling a good story. And I appreciate getting better at it with every story I tell. That won't ever change, no matter what.