Blood of the Giants: Published Novella

My time with Fiction Express draws to a close. All five chapters are available for readers of the site.

It’s been a blast. One of the nicest things has been interacting with readers in the forum, which isn’t an experience I’ve had with my writing before (beyond receiving feedback to improve). Each week, I’ve posted topics for them to respond to (an opportunity for them to practice their English skills), which has involved them commenting on an element of that week’s chapter. For example, in the final week, I asked them what they thought happened in a conversation between two characters, which is alluded to in the last chapter but not shown. Many of the responses were fun to read, especially the ones where the students wrote out their own conversations, showing a great understanding of the characters! It’s been encouraging to know that readers have enjoyed the reading experience and to see how they have engaged with the story.

At some stage in the future, the novella may become available to purchase through Amazon. I’ll post a link in this blog if that does happen.

The big question for me now is what happens next. I’ve finished a draft of the YA novel that I’m sending to my agent later this month. When I receive her feedback, I will be moving into a stage of revision with that story. In the meantime, I’m outlining a couple of other ideas for Fiction Express. I would love to write for them again at some stage, although I know it won’t happen soon – they already have writers booked in for the next two half terms, meaning the earliest I could possibly write for them is in March. It’ll be back to Critique Circle in the short term with those projects, to hopefully get some feedback to make them attractive to the Fiction Express editors.

The reality of the tax year 2024-2025 is that I won’t earn enough from writing to cover my living costs. I’m not likely to be booked in for Fiction Express again, and the new novel, still in its rough first draft, is only at the beginning of a journey towards the editors at the big publishing houses – an advance is likely to be years away, if it happens at all. As such, I’ve applied for a part-time (ten hour) teaching assistant role this week. I’m hopeful that I can find a balance with a job like that which allows me to keep pushing forward with my writing projects.

The good thing about the Blood of the Giants novella is that it is my longest publication to date (at 12,500 words) so hopefully it is a sign that I’m moving in the right direction for the publication of a longer work. I’m grateful for the opportunity and for everything I’ve learned from the process.

Upcoming Activities

With the summer drawing to a close, here’s a roundup of everything that will be keeping me busy from September onwards…

The first is that I will be working with Fiction Express at last. This commissioned writing partners me with school students (mostly in Spain and Latin America) to write a story in five chapters. The students vote at the end of each chapter to determine where the story goes next. It’s a fun way to help them develop their English reading skills, and I’m excited to begin.

Another thing that I’m going to be doing (on a voluntary basis) is working with Grimm & Co. This is a charity that helps young people develop their creative writing skills. My agent recommended that delivering some writing classes could be another good thing for my overall portfolio, and it’ll be good to be around my target audience again. One of the things I miss from my teaching career is interacting with the kids.

The biggest project I have on the go (which will hopefully make some progress concurrent with Fiction Express) is the latest novel draft. I’ve reached 25K, so it feels like it’s taking shape. My rough estimates for completion put it somewhere in the 50-75K range, although I can’t say with any certainty while I’m still relatively early in the process. It’s still a first draft, and I expect I’ll need to make big changes (as always) once it’s finished. My hope is to have a full draft by the end of October – that’s when I’ve arranged to send what I have to my agent for feedback.

In other news, the story that was published in print is now freely available online here. It’s in a collection with lots of other short stories about how scientists are working to reverse the ongoing climate crisis, so it’s well-worth a read.

Why I Don’t Give Up

Since the last blog was a bit bleak, I thought I’d counteract it with some truths this time.

How many times it took me to pass my driving test: 4

I cried in the car after every failed test. The woman who failed me on my second test went on to pass me on the fourth.

How many Cambridge colleges interviewed me before I was accepted: 2

After the first one, I entered what was called the ‘pool’. They liked me but not quite enough to offer me a place, and another college fished me out to give me a second chance.

How many attempts it took me to pass my PGCE (teaching qualification): 2

I took a year out to work as a teaching assistant before I finished the course successfully.

How many times I applied for a teaching job at the school where I eventually worked: 3

I first applied early in my PGCE and was (understandably) passed over. I applied again later, after my year as a teaching assistant, unsure whether they would give me a second chance. The third application turned my temporary contract into a permanent contract.

How many times I sent out a query to an agent before I finally got representation: 34

That’s if my records (which go back over two decades with three different novels) are accurate.

So, the fact that the main publishing houses in the UK looked and passed over the first novel I worked on with my agent is consistent with how my life has progressed so far. And hopefully there will be more success with the next novel.

I’m currently drafting proposals and opening chapters for two different novels. One is probably best described as a Young Adult Speculative Psychological Drama (same target age as the last novel, but a very different genre) and one is Adult Crime Fiction (if YA fails, the rationale is to try an entirely different market). I’m still in the early stages (4000 words with the Crime novel, 1000 with the YA novel), but hopefully I can finish a first draft of one of the two complete before the end of the year.

Drafting is always a pleasurable part of the process.

I also had a small piece of good news that I'm on another longlist this week. The judging process isn't finished, so perhaps the short story can go further...

Death of a Novel

Remember when I wrote that Garth Nix once compared sending a novel out to publishing houses as being like a merchant sending out a ship, where it could either return with great fortunes or founder?

Well, from my experience, it’s more like this…

 

Imagine you’re stranded on an island. You’re the only person there. All you have with you is a packet of cedar seeds. You know that if you can cross the strip of water, you’ll reach the mainland, where the people are. So, you plant a seed. Days turn into weeks. You toil every day to survive yourself while you create conditions for your little tree to grow. You desalinate salt water to nourish it, you check on it each day, you carefully measure its progress. All the while, you look out over the sea, dreaming of the day your little tree will carry you over the water to the people on the mainland.

Years pass and the tree grows. You sharpen a blade of rock and cut it down. You split the trunk into planks and carefully shape and plane and bow the wood into a dinghy. It’s a labour-intensive process, and you often hurt yourself in the process, but one day, finally, the little boat is ready. Its sails snap in the winds and for the first time you feel something like hope. You climb into your dinghy and the wind is strong, true, carrying you directly to the mainland. You imagine what it will be like, to connect with people after so long.

But you realise as you approach that jutting rocks bar your way. The wind of expectation is too strong and when the boat strikes, the impact severe. As your precious dinghy splinters around you, you sink into salty water. The tide carries you back to the island. Everything is as it was before. But one seed is gone from your pack, and you’re not quite as agile as you were once, when you were first stranded on the island.

 

That’s the story of Spirit Bound, a novel I’ve been working on for over a decade. I’m grateful that it broke against vast rocks like Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, and Scholastic – over twenty big publishing houses in total. I never really expected it to sail so far, even after I convinced an agent to take me on. To have feedback that shows that these editors read my work is far more than I’ve ever achieved before. But the sting of salt is real.

There are a few possibilities at this stage. I could choose to self-publish the novel. It’s not part of my current plan, but it remains a long-term possibility. Short-term, the novel will be shelved. There’s a slim possibility that in years to come, editors may be more likely to take on the risk – if I establish my name in some other way, for example. So, the short-term plan is to develop a new novel and begin the process again. I have an agent, which will save a lot of time when I have a polished novel ready.

If there’s a lesson to be learned in all this, I suppose it’s that there’s no point spending over a decade working on a single novel. I didn’t really have a choice, or I didn’t think I did. But I could have chosen a job that wasn’t so demanding (of both creativity and time) than teaching to pay the way. I could have created better conditions, day-to-day, to draft a novel over a shorter span of time.

So, the interesting thing will be how long it takes me to draft a new novel. If it takes longer than a year for me to let it set sail, I will know that I’m doing something wrong.

Short Successes

January was a busy month as I was editing the sequel to my first novel (I'm still waiting to see if any publishers are interested in the first book). I’m currently receiving feedback on the sequel's second draft from members of my writing group, and my current plan is to work on more revisions in March.

As the sequel was taking up all my attention last month, I haven’t submitted to any short story competitions for a couple of months, but I need to get started again. In the last couple of days, I’ve received some news worth sharing: a story that I submitted in December reached second place in a competition. It’s called ‘A Book Report’ and is available to read for free (along with the other winners).

While I was researching competitions today, deciding what to enter next, I also discovered that I’ve been longlisted for another competition. It’s too early to know which story caught the judges’ attention (I entered two) or how far it might get in the competition, but it’s good to know that I’ve received some recognition. Fingers crossed!

In other news, I’ve written an opening chapter for Fiction Express. I’m going to get some feedback from my writing group this week, and then I’ll be sending that off to my agent next week. Hopefully, the organisation will like the concept. I’m not sure I’ll begin writing for them in February/March (given how soon their next batch of stories will go live), but hopefully they’ll slot me in for their April books.

Steady progress overall, but the shorter works have a much quicker turnaround!

Doors Opening

My agent contacted me today with some potentially exciting news: an organisation had contacted her to see if I was interested in being involved in their writing projects. The organisation is called Fiction Express, and it aims to encourage young people to develop a love of reading. Over a half term, they release a chapter of a new book each week, and the young people involved have the chance to read and vote on where the story will go next. 

From the writer’s perspective, it sounds like an intense experience, but I have been involved in short story competitions this year that have also required very tight turnarounds, so I’m up for the challenge. I also believe, at this stage in my career, that it’s important to say ‘yes’ to any opportunity that comes my way. This is the first thing that I’ve seen in addition to my own personal novel projects where I believe I could earn enough to cover my living costs for the year. 

It’s great that my agent has passed this on to me, and I feel again so incredibly grateful that she decided to offer me representation. I’m officially on the DKW website’s list of authors, which is a big confidence boost as well. I think that the organisation may have approached my agent because of that profile, so it’s excellent that even though the novel may not yet have interest from publishing house editors (only three rejections so far), having an agent is opening doors in other ways. There have been times when I’ve weighed up the advantages and disadvantages of going for traditional publication versus self-publication, and this is one of those moments of definite ‘advantage’ for the traditional route, something I didn’t know about until now. 

 Anyway, I’ll finish by taking the opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Always Check Your Junk Mail

The title says it all... I happened to check my junk inbox today and discovered that I'd come in first place in a story competition. For eight whole days, my work has been published online, and I've been none the wiser! Anyway, you can check out the story ‘The Slumbering Dragon’ here.

According to my records, there should be a £300 prize for first place in this competition. Hopefully, this should come my way now that I’ve responded to the email from the competition organisers. If it does, it will be a dream come true, as I will be in profit from my ventures into short story competitions.

Reaching a longlist was incredible, but perhaps a fluke. Reaching a shortlist and being published was amazing, but perhaps just a one-off. To win a competition and be published a second time suggests that people do actually want to read what I have to write.

It’s still early days, but I’d love to make a career from my writing. My agent is currently approaching editors at publishing houses for my YA Fantasy novel. It will be at least six weeks before we hear anything about it. Garth Nix (a fellow writer!) wrote a post comparing this stage to 16^th-century merchants setting out in their ships across the sea, uncertain whether their venture would lead to profit or shipwreck. To keep busy, I’m at work with the sequel. But if nothing comes from the novel series, I have plenty of other projects to consider in future years.

Representation

It’s been quite a week. First came the news I’d reached the shortlist in the flash fiction competition, and then the conversation with the agent who had read the full manuscript for the novel. I’ve been sitting on exciting news since Thursday, hardly able to trust its reality, terrified it would be snatched away, but now that I’ve signed the relevant documentation, I can share it: I have accepted an offer of representation!

It’s been a long journey. I first embarked upon the quest for publication in 2006 with a novel that I shelved several years later. Two full novels later, various concepts that never made it to completion, and six drafts of my current project later, I’m now a client at DKW Literary Agency under the representation of the lovely Camille Burns.

This is a bigger step than I ever believed I would take. Secretly, I expected, when I quit my paid job last summer, to be back in some sort of educational setting (probably tutoring) part-time after a year out without any glimmer of hope. I wouldn’t give up, but I’d shelve the current novel (having exhausted the list of agents that I thought might take an interest) and write a new novel, to begin the long process again. I have a novel already conceptualised, that I was planning to draft in January 2024. I was working to a five-year plan that would eventually lead to self-publication of several novels. It would be a route into publication, and maybe I would find some success, but it would not be my dream path…

However, gaining an agent means I have access to the traditional route into publishing and all the benefits in terms of connections and industry experts. Just in brief conversations with Camille so far, I’ve received feedback that I’ve never received elsewhere that has been transformative for the novel (and right now I’m planning out a major redrafting of the final third), and her works have also made me consider areas of publishing that I’ve never considered, things like overseas and translation. I don’t know if my novel will ever have the level of success to require those kinds of services, but I know that it’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t have occurred to me if I were going it alone.

This has all come about because of the Bradford Literary Festival sessions where writers could pay to meet an agent and receive a critique of their work. Meeting an agent face-to-face, in a setting where that agent was paid to consider your work (rather than look for excuses to skip over it since they have another thousand hopefuls to also consider that day), really did make all the difference. And it makes such a big difference to have someone who is really enthusiastic about your writing, who believes that what you’ve written deserves to be read. If you are reading this as an aspiring writer, I strongly encourage you to check out Jericho Writers – a website that facilitates conversations between writers and agents, similar (if more expensive) than what I was lucky enough to be involved in at the literary festival.

Telling people that I have written a book is often a process of ‘expectation management’, since people who don’t know the industry often believe that reaching ‘the end’ means the book will be published the very next day. Even with an agent, it might be years before a publisher takes interest in this novel, if at all. However, it’s a palpable step, and I’m very excited to see where this road will take me.

As always, I can’t thank enough the fellow writers on Critique Circle, who’ve always given me such valuable and thoughtful feedback on my work. And thanks to everyone who has celebrated my small successes over the last twelve months: I’m so grateful for all your support.

The results are in...

 I have a small bit of news: I can now say I’m a longlisted writer.

A short story I wrote earlier this year called ‘Another Man’s Treasure’ made it onto the Frome Short Story Competition Long List 2023. You can click here to see the list, but it’s nothing exciting - it doesn't even say my name.

However, a longlist is a glimmer of hope. It means that a judge liked the story sufficiently to recognise it. It doesn’t mean that I’m published, though it does mean that I can try the story elsewhere to see whether a different judge in another competition would like it more.

It also means I can add this to my writing CV to hopefully make me stand out a little when querying agents for my novel. I don’t know whether I will have any success with the agent who is currently reading my full manuscript. I have to be prepared to be back in the usual position, with no agent, trying to reach out to others across the cybergulf. But if that’s where I am in a few months’ time, at least I’ll be able to tell agents that I am a longlisted writer.

How to Meet an Agent

 I have a little news: an agent has asked to read my full manuscript.

This is a tiny step that has never occurred before. It’s still very early days because the agent may read the entire novel and decide it would be too hard to sell. I’ve accepted that. However, she has promised to give feedback, so even in that scenario, hopefully her advice will make it more attractive to other agents. She’s already given me some excellent feedback on the opening chapters that I’m working to implement before I send it back to her.

Getting a full manuscript request has always been the stumbling point, the point at which I put my novels on hold and write something new. In some ways, the last ten months have been harder than when I was submitting to agents in my teens. Back then, I received a nice piece of paper with a generic rejection after a long wait. These days, the best I have received is an email, and in most cases, nothing at all.

It turns out that submitting work to the slushpile (the inbox of an agent) isn’t the best way to approach an agent. The route into communication with this agent came from a very different avenue: my attendance at Bradford Literary Festival.

I don’t know how typical this is of literary festivals, but I should note here that Bradford Literary Festival 2023 was an amazing event for emerging writers. They had many sessions which were pitched to unpublished writers, and as well as offering encouragement, real stories and practical advice, they also had a 1:1 event to meet an agent.

I booked onto this event through luck. I had no idea it was happening until a writing buddy on Critique Circle told me that she was doing it, and then I was lucky enough that I was in the country to attend, because the day before we arrived home from a holiday in Europe. Anyway, after wrestling with my own insecurities briefly (the terrifying prospect of receiving verbal feedback), I decided to go for it, because that must be the attitude to make something happen.

I had no expectations for the event. The website description simply said it was a chance to receive feedback from an agent. I thought it would be helpful to know which elements of my pitch were off-putting, and more specifically if the novel concept itself just wasn’t saleable and I should work on something else. So, it was an amazing experience to be told by someone in the industry that my writing style is good. It’s a huge validation of all the efforts I’ve put in over the years.

A third piece of luck I should mention is the agent I originally booked to meet was unable to attend, and the agent I met replaced him. From researching her, I was already happy, because her bio expressed her interest in Young Adult, while the original agent (from a pick of three not yet booked up) seemed only partially suitable due to his interest in Adult Fantasy.

The lesson I have taken from the festival generally is that this is a much better way to get in touch with agents. Meeting them in person begins a dialogue, allows them to see your passion and understand your aims much better than a sentence or two bio in a query letter ever can. Another statistic I learned from another session at the festival is that a big agent receives 700 to 1000 submissions every week to their inbox, of which they might accept just two new clients a year. I always knew the chances were slim, but statistics like that really hammer home just how infinitesimally slim the odds are. A really good question was asked in the general agent meet, when they referred to how most of their clients are not unsolicited. Someone asked how they find new writers, then, if they don’t find them in the slushpile, and the answer was: events like this one.

If nothing else, I know to look out for future events which involve agents. And that my writing is good.