Love for a Difficult Book

I got sort of back in the swing of writing yesterday, spending a couple of intense hours on revisions. At this phase, it's not so much about rewriting as it is about evaluating what's there and seriously considering whether or not it works or if there's a way to do it better. I'm also making tiny tweaks, like tightening up the dialogue. The main purpose of this draft is to make sure that whatever changes I made in the last round actually work.

And I'm finding that I still love this book. I find myself wallowing in it, practically reveling in it. I've already decided that if a publisher doesn't buy it, I'm self publishing this one. My agent said she loves it, so I'm not entirely delusional about my love for this book. She just admits that finding the right market for it in traditional publishing may be a challenge. It's sort of "light" fantasy with almost no grit whatsoever, so it may be a tough sell to fantasy houses. There are romantic elements, but none of the relationships are fully resolved and there's no sex, so the romance imprints won't be even remotely interested. It might play as "women's fiction" but there I think it would have the same problem as my other series had when published in that category, where the people most likely to want to read it (the fantasy readers) wouldn't easily find it. We're probably going to go after both fantasy and women's fiction editors at the same time and see who bites.

At any rate, I think the next project I tackle will be the sequel to this book. It'll be fresh in my head after doing the final touches, and if it sells, I'll already have the sequel ready to go. If it doesn't sell, I'll already have the sequel ready to e-publish.

Meanwhile, I'm using the March TV downtime to marathon the first two seasons of Game of Thrones before the new one starts. I read the whole series to-date since the last season was on, and now I'm not clear on what happened in the show as opposed to what happened in the books. Plus, having read the books, it's interesting watching the series with the knowledge of what will happen. It makes good background noise for knitting. I have more than a foot of my blanket done. It also finally clicked for me how the pattern works, and knowing this should help minimize mistakes because I'll always know where I am. It is getting a little more challenging to manage when there's that much material hanging off the needles. I can just see how tangled I might get when I'm close to the end.