After about a week and a half break, I couldn’t stand being away from my manuscript so long and I finally started to tackle my revisions for my paranormal romance.

I thought it would be hard to attain the necessary objectivity as I felt pretty attached to my characters, but I started working on it in December so the first half of the book was far enough away and I was surprised at just how quickly my professional editor’s reflexes kicked in. I have demolished at least three chapters already. It started off at just over 100,000 words and I hope to cut it down to 90,000 words, which is a bit more appropriate for the genre; but only if I can tell the story efficiently enough. If it needs more words, then it needs more words.

I feel much closer to the second half of the book so I think it will be a lot harder to kill my darlings in that section. “Killing your darlings” is writer-speak for cutting out stuff you’re attached to but do not add to the story in the long run. I am attached to a side character romance between Eamon and Isaiah and I may have spent too much time on that, but as Eamon is one of the three POV’s in the book, I may have to keep it. I didn’t want it to be too predictable, either. But maybe those chapters just need to be backstory. Something to ponder later on.

I have also decided, after looking into the cost of hiring an editor (anywhere from $600-1800), commissioning cover art ($50-150 on Fiverr, $350-600 for some artists), and investing in Atticus formatting software ($149), I have decided I am going to submit to small presses first instead of self publishing, and keep self publishing in my back pocket if the small presses don’t give me what I want.

I think I have a pretty good chance, considering as paranormal romance, crime and queer characters are big sellers right now for debut authors. And I think small presses are a good compromise between self publishing and querying. You don’t get as much of the control or the royalties with small presses, but after investing in my team I don’t expect I’ll get much in royalties anyway. I’d rather have an established business do that work for me, if I can get accepted, as long as it is not a vanity press or hybrid press. If I have to pay money to publish, I’d rather self publish and pick my own team.

I’m not interested in querying because this is a very niche market, and ownvoices is very trendy right now. I am a queer author but I am not queer guy, but I’m writing about queer guys in love. Besides, querying takes too long. You often spend a year getting rejected by agents and then a year getting rejected by publishers your agent pitches, especially if it’s not a trending topic. I want my book published faster than that. It can happen faster than that if your book has the right magic sauce, but reading the tea leaves of the rapidly changing publishing industry is complicated.

So I have been looking at small publishers who are interested in LGBT paranormal romance crime thrillers and compiling a list of people to submit to. I figure I’ll give it a good six months and if I get buried by rejections, I can still go about hiring an editor and proceeding with my original self publishing plans.

And I also recently read Richard Russo’s essay “Getting Good” that ultimately persuaded me to try small presses. It helped me understand the value in rejection and how having a community of professional people in the publishing industry can help improve your craft and help you grow as a writer. I am fine with running my own publishing house and thinking of it as a business, but I also don’t want to pump out 30 books a year just to be remembered by the algorithm. I want to take my time, be inspired, and get good, be the best I can be with my craft.

But first things first: The edits. Had to take another little break from it because I was starting to get too obsessed. Can’t find your romantic leads annoying, after all, or the reader will. I’ve been saving multiple drafts as I make major changes to the first half, then I compile everything into an ebook format and read it again on my Kindle – I always manage to find typos I missed versus when I look at it in Scrivener. I’m actually surprised at how ruthless I’ve been. I was really finding my way in my first half and just racing to achieve a word count, I think. I found my footing in the second half, which won’t need as much work.

I’ve also closed down my Patreon and I’ll only be keeping up with my Ko-fi from now on. I just wasn’t getting enough interest in previews of upcoming works, but I think people would be interested in my short stories if they were free on a donation basis. I still have to work on building a fanbase for my writing, after all. I get ahead of myself sometimes. I also decided to discontinue my newsletter because after a year I only had 15 subscribers. That’s the advice that people always give to new authors, but frankly I’ve had more luck with my blog so that’s where I’ll focus my efforts for now.

That’s all my ramblings for now. Until next week!

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