WIP meme
Being a memesheep here, and following a bunch of other rascafarians in blethering about the WIP. The original set of questions doesn't quite work for mine, because some of them assume that the W is no longer IP as a first draft. So I shall adapt to circumstance.
1. What is the working title of your book? Taxman. Because the protagonist is an employee of Her Majesty's Customs & Revenue, and this does factor into how he ultimately deals with the bad guy. The pen is mightier than the sword, especially when it's wielded by one of the Queen's counting men.
2. Where did the idea come from for the book? This was one of the ones where a scene simply turned up in my head and insisted that I write it, without any obvious outside trigger. And from my blog post at the time: I'm still trying to work out what the book is. It started with a very specific image, and I've got that down now in the 10,000 words I'd written by the end of last week. And I've got a rough idea of some of the things that happen later, why this fairy is running around modern London, why someone kidnapped him and how he drew that person's attention, and how the human who helped him when he escaped will be able to make sure he's permanently safe. But it hasn't gelled yet. And worse, I'm not sure that it's going to have enough sex to appeal to the erotic romance market, or that it's going to have enough plot to make 100,000 words so that I can try inflicting it on a fantasy publisher.
It's grown some more plot since then. :->
3. What genre does your book fall under? Urban fantasy m/m romance. If I had any commercial sense I'd have written it as het and tried to sell it to a Big 6 publisher -- it would have changed some of the character dynamics but it would still have worked. Although I'd probably be told to change it from femdom to maledom, and one of the reasons I write m/m is that I don't like maledom.
4. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? These are not the only options. :-) You don't need an agent to submit to small presses. You don't even need an agent to send a query letter to the Big 6, although you'd better be able to write a really good query letter. I've never had an agent even though I have a string of commercially published novels, because my genre is largely published by specialist small presses who take over-the-transom. If I wanted to sell to the Big 6, I'd look for an agent.
5. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? I'm still writing it. Also, define "how long". I started writing this in 2007 when I was mugged by the aforementioned scene. I turned out 10,000 words in 9 days, and then left it to ferment while I worked on something else. I wrote L&M 2, started on L&M 3, and then got hit by bad health for several years and didn't write at all. Picked it up again last year, then couldn't write at all for several months earlier this year. Elapsed time, five years. Time actually spent working on this manuscript? Probably about four months so far.
6. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Fairies! Sex! The Civil Service triumphing over evil rich bastards who think they're above the law! What more could you possibly want?
[exit, bleating]
1. What is the working title of your book? Taxman. Because the protagonist is an employee of Her Majesty's Customs & Revenue, and this does factor into how he ultimately deals with the bad guy. The pen is mightier than the sword, especially when it's wielded by one of the Queen's counting men.
2. Where did the idea come from for the book? This was one of the ones where a scene simply turned up in my head and insisted that I write it, without any obvious outside trigger. And from my blog post at the time: I'm still trying to work out what the book is. It started with a very specific image, and I've got that down now in the 10,000 words I'd written by the end of last week. And I've got a rough idea of some of the things that happen later, why this fairy is running around modern London, why someone kidnapped him and how he drew that person's attention, and how the human who helped him when he escaped will be able to make sure he's permanently safe. But it hasn't gelled yet. And worse, I'm not sure that it's going to have enough sex to appeal to the erotic romance market, or that it's going to have enough plot to make 100,000 words so that I can try inflicting it on a fantasy publisher.
It's grown some more plot since then. :->
3. What genre does your book fall under? Urban fantasy m/m romance. If I had any commercial sense I'd have written it as het and tried to sell it to a Big 6 publisher -- it would have changed some of the character dynamics but it would still have worked. Although I'd probably be told to change it from femdom to maledom, and one of the reasons I write m/m is that I don't like maledom.
4. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? These are not the only options. :-) You don't need an agent to submit to small presses. You don't even need an agent to send a query letter to the Big 6, although you'd better be able to write a really good query letter. I've never had an agent even though I have a string of commercially published novels, because my genre is largely published by specialist small presses who take over-the-transom. If I wanted to sell to the Big 6, I'd look for an agent.
5. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? I'm still writing it. Also, define "how long". I started writing this in 2007 when I was mugged by the aforementioned scene. I turned out 10,000 words in 9 days, and then left it to ferment while I worked on something else. I wrote L&M 2, started on L&M 3, and then got hit by bad health for several years and didn't write at all. Picked it up again last year, then couldn't write at all for several months earlier this year. Elapsed time, five years. Time actually spent working on this manuscript? Probably about four months so far.
6. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Fairies! Sex! The Civil Service triumphing over evil rich bastards who think they're above the law! What more could you possibly want?
[exit, bleating]