Tougher than I thought!

My first official Blog, so I am just going to ramble a bit.

Okay, so here's the proverbial scoop. I finished my first novel, "Pulse", which is a commercial fiction thriller. Hooray!! Right? Well... NOT REALLY!!

Finishing the novel, I quickly discovered, was not the hard part. The hard part is just beginning. As a newbie to all of this, I started trying to do research, which thanks to the Internet, has been filling my brain with tons of useful (but sometimes confusing) information. For example, formatting your manuscript. Visit ten different sites and you can actually get ten different interpretations of the "correct" way to do this.... I know, I checked! That is a very long story which I am going to skip for now.

So, back to the bigger picture. In this day and age you do not just contact a big publishing company and say, "hey, my book is done, take a look!" Nope, to get your book out there you first need to query an agent, and cross your fingers in the hopes that they will want to see your manuscript, and then, if they do, you cross harder and hope they offer representation.

My first thought was "What the heck is that and how do I do it?" More research. This is another area where there is a vast difference of opinion as to what makes a good query letter. I have been toying with mine, and I am not certain that it has that special "zip" just yet, but I did get an agent at a rather "BIG FISH" agency interested in seeing my manuscript. Hmmmm...

Of course, that was one agent that wanted to see it out of many that did not! She has had it for about a week, and I know it can take MUCH MUCH longer than that, so we will see. I have made several revisions since I sent it to her (I must admit, I had jumped the gun a bit and not even proofread.... OOPS!! I sent the query, she wanted to read it, and I got excited.)

I will post a bit about my novel in a future blog. I will also try to post about the trials and tribulations I encounter on the road to getting it published.