Hey all,

I thought I would update you on the pursuit of selling a novel.  A month ago, I put my young adult novel Purgatory in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.  The winner gets a deal with Penguin Publishing and a $15,000 advance.  The first round was made up of 10,000 entrants.  Today, the list of second rounders were announced, and yours truly made it past the first round.  Now out of 10,000, they accepted 1000 novels for regular fiction and 1000 for young adult fiction.  The next round will be made up of 250 of each and will be chosen at the end of March.
I was very worried about the first round because you had to write a pitch to try and sell your novel to the group.  I am not worried about my novel itself and think it will go far but that is just me being biased.  The pitch is different from a normal query and it took a bit of work.  The next round will be judged on the novel itself and even if it is turned down, I will be given some good comments, instead of agents that send a basic rejection letter.

Here is the website if you want to see my name in lights.  Go to the blue words 1000 Young Adult Fiction and click on it.  You will find my name there.

http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011

Keep your fingers crossed and I will let you know about the following round as soon as I find out.

Well it looks like we’re going to start unveiling content from Alan’s book D&B so I suppose I should get used to releasing some artwork on here.  So I’ve got two to offer up.

The first is my daughter Izzy’s super alter ego, SunCrystal (why do I have this feeling she’s going to end up in one of Shag’s ComicCon Cosplay picture albums about 10 years from now?).  She made this character up as a member of the Teen Titans, presumably to get StarFire out of the way and get closer to Robin.  I don’t even want to talk about that.

SunCrystal’s costume is designed based upon her input:  The color scheme, the “fancy” mask, the crystal, all her ideas.  I added the glowing highlights and the underarm cape flaps and they were approved by the creative genius.

Her power:  Holding the power of the sun and crystals in her hands.  Okay so we need to work on a few things.  She’s 4, give her a break.

 The other pic I’m going to post is just a sketch I did to get in the mood for D&B’s artwork.  I drew this before I saw the promo pic for The Walking Dead.  I think I ruined this one with the crap ink job so this one’s going to get a facelift pretty quickly.

For the past few years, I have been working on my first novel, Purgatory.  It was indeed a process of writing and rewriting, editing and then editing it once again.  A storyboard was created, used, scrapped, redone, then finally used to create a strong finished product.

I finally completed the product in the end of July, after having both Craig and Keith read and edit it.  I then fixed all my mistakes, which were many, and placed the final period on the story Purgatory.  It was one of my greatest accomplishments as most people talk of writing a book but few get around to it.

So I sat down and wrote, what is called, a query letter.  It was a one page letter which covered several topics.  I had to give a brief, and I mean brief, synopsis of my novel.  My 255 page book was reduced to one paragraph.  This was tougher than I thought.  I had trouble because my novel is really original and has many moving parts.  After that, I had to inform the reader of who I was, in a brief biography.  Who am I?  Well this was my first novel.  After that?  Hmmm, married, child, history, video games, Mets.  These aren’t exactly selling points; especially my love of the Mets.  Basically I spent one page selling my book.  And again, this is a tough tough process.  Everything has to be perfect.

Next came the process of finding a literary agent.  Once I finished my book, I thought, “no problem with this one.  I will just send it to the agent that interests me most and wait for the request to read my manuscript”.  Unfortunately, that was my first rejection.  I re-read the agent’s website and decided that maybe my genre just wasn’t “for him”.  So I found several more agents that specialized in both young adult lit, as well as historical fiction.  I knew, just knew, they would all say yes.  However, more rejections.

So here I am 14 rejections later.  I am a bit closer as an agent did ask to read my manuscript.  14:  No/ 1: Yes.  While that is considered a minor slump in baseball if a batter went 1 out of the last 14, it is considered a minor victory in the writing world.  Sure my hit was a bloop single.  If she shows more interest, then we can make it ground rule double.

The reason I write this is because it was an eye opening and humble experience; one which I am still stuck in.  I currently have 50 query letters out, with only one yes.  I am sure a lot of the agents haven’t got around to reading my letter, some never will.  One agent sent me a rejection letter just minutes after I sent my query.  In his rejection response, he apologized for it taking so long to get back to me and said this project may not be for him.  Hmmm, a long time in responding?  It was minutes.  It MAY NOT be for him?  It either is or isn’t.

I am not worried that eventually someone will pick up on my novel and they will be happy they did.  It is original and not the typical vampire/wizard book that young adults normally read.  I have had four people read it and heard great responses from them.

So I won’t give up and I will keep plugging away.  Maybe this agent that asked to read my book will be excited enough to want to work with me.  Maybe she won’t and I will move on.  I might be surprised and have several of those 50 agents ask for my manuscript.  They could also all turn it down and I will continue my search.  Either way, I have to be patience.  I don’t really have a choice.

PURGATORY: coming soon