Things have been busy for me. During the day, I work as a Subject Matter Expert and support a sales staff around the globe. We are all focused on the upcoming Q1 (starts Dec 1) as our CEO believes if you have a successful start of the year, the rest will fall in line. Considering Oil companies account for a large portion of our business, the upcoming year is looking sketchy at best. So, I’m working extra hours to help in any way that I can (basically doing a whole bunch or research as to how we can grow accounts).
I know, you’re wondering how this is important to my writing. Well, the extra hours have limited the amount of time I have to write. Of course the wife is back teaching after the summer off, and my oldest is busy with his final year of elementary school, which is also cutting into my writing time.
I started querying THE RISING PAST, Book 1 in the Keepers of the Orbs series about ten days ago. As I am sure some of you are aware, this in itself is time consuming. I have a list of about 110 different agents I am querying (have only sent out a portion of those so far as I am trying to space them out). From my first wave, I have only received 3 “not interested” so far, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Tonight I finished my second read through/edit/cut/update of THE ELVES OF A SUGAR MAPLE. This is not part of the Keepers of the Orbs series and is actually based on a tree in my backyard. It is one of the features of our house that sold my wife on the purchase twelve years ago. I’m very excited about this story. I love the way it came together and I feel like my writing is really starting to come into its own. I am now giving it to my wife to edit, but unfortunately she still has about 25% left to edit on a paying job, so it has to take a back seat for a couple more weeks. But I know she is just as excited as I am for to get her hands on it. The idea after all, was hers. In the time we have lived here, we have had many conversations and musings as to what creatures may live on this tree. She had initiated the idea that it was a race of Fairies and we talked about it at great length. I felt the whole Fairy thing has been overdone, so I changed them to Tree Elves, and I then let the keyboard guide me as I discovered this little story. It’s 70k words, so it’s shorter than my other books, but I feel like it is a wonderful little story and I have high hopes for it. So stay tuned for further information.
That means, tomorrow I am returning to the next book in the Keepers series. I started on it back in March, but had to put it down as I was unsure of a couple of things in THE RISING PAST that I wanted to have nailed down before I continued. With those loose ends tied up, I am exited to dive back into Raythum’s world. I’m very excited with the direction of the story and can’t wait to see how it all comes together.
In the meantime, feel free to grab a copy of THE UNKNOWN MAN, the prequel to The Keepers of the Orbs series by Clicking Here That’s all for now.
J.G. Gatewood Blog 