A couple of conversations over the course of the past week have clarified things. I’ve been in a bit of panic – what to do next, must keep powering ahead, sell something else, keep going, keep going, keep going. This panic has, of course, rendered me unable to go ahead.
But now I realise (thanks to some words of wisdom) that there’s no point in panicking. It is going to be a good nine to twelve months before I’m in a position to sell more novel-length work – we need some sales figures from the first books to see if it’s at all doable. That’s just the way it is. The fury of the past 14 months has tricked me that it’s always like that, when in fact it’s not. This is, as an industry professional from North America told me on Thursday, the way publishing is – you’ll have periods of madness followed by periods of fallow. I’m now moving into a period of fallow – accept it and things will be easier.
So I have, and with that came clarity and with that came the realisation of what I need to do next. So here’s the plan for the next nine to twelve months.
From now until the end of the year, my focus is Battle for Odana. This is the novel I had to put aside in July last year when I sold the Dream of Asarlai trilogy. At that point I had a workable draft, but of a single novel. Over the past year, I’ve realised that I need to expand it. There’s a lot more of the story that a single novel doesn’t give justice to, and then there’s the reality that fantasy publishers aren’t so much into single novels. So I’m going to spend the next four and a half months on working that into two books and getting the first of those books polished up and ready for submission.
Then in the first half of next year, I’ll work on a different project that I want to pursue (don’t want to talk about it yet). It’s a trilogy – I have the characters, I have the basic plotline of the trilogy. My aim is to get the overall planning done and the first book of it up to scratch as well.
Then, by the time we’re ready to start selling again, I’ll have two options to put on the table. Publishers might like one, or the other, or maybe both. A five book contract – that would be cool :)
I feel good now that this decision is made. Knowing where I’m heading is a great place to be. Time to start.