All in Novels
Understand that even before I landed an agent this last spring, I’d heard how stressful it is to be “on submission” with a novel. Especially a debut. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes years, sometimes never, sometimes right after you give up when a random publisher decides to double-back and jump in with an offer. There are thousands of ways it can go down, and most of them involve an excruciating amount of waiting.
This weekend I signed a representation deal with Mark Falkin of Falkin Literary after a great chat we had last week about a book I wrote, currently titled IT WON'T LEAVE. It's a horror novel set in Texas, about a cancer patient named JJ who moves back to San Antonio, into his father's new house. As his chemo treatments begin, he realizes a malignant presence is hiding within the bones of that house. Something that wants him out. Something that sees HIM as a cancer in need of eradication.
My 2017 writing life started by trying to revise a novel I had worked on for almost a decade, before deciding around March that it just wasn’t working. Plot holes kept shifting, twists I added to make the story unique only made other part of the story implausible, and I kept blending too many genres to the point where I didn’t know if the story was taking place in the past, present, or future, if it was a dystopian story or a noir or both or neither. I admit, I was making it too hard on myself, too complex, but I had lost the clear vision needed to simplify that story. I was in too deep and it just wasn’t working out. I love the characters so damn much, but I decided to stop for good (or...for now?) and pursue other projects I wanted to work on.
