I planned to have the Penumbra manuscript down not last Friday, but the Friday before and didn’t quite make it there. So I thought maybe last Friday was the day and still, didn’t quite make it there. But I’m so close and I’m almost sure I can get it done this week. Like 99.9% sure.

It’s rough because I’d love to send a polished, ready to publish manuscript out to beta readers, but that just seems like a bad idea. So right now the plan is to have the story about 95% finished (100% unless I get some significant feedback about plot issues from readers) and about 20% finished polish-wise. That’s hard for me, because I want my paragraphs completely optimized and I want to remove all of my poorly written sentences. But I’ve been considering the fact that beta readers take time. So I’m going to use that time to polish while they read and make sure I set the expectation early that they aren’t ready a perfect book.

I got a chance to meet with my friend Chris this past weekend, I mentioned earlier that his book Duskfall was published last year. He’s a great guy and I had a great time. It was interesting listening to him go through the process he did to find his agent and end up published. The work I’ve done for a small publishing company differs so drastically from the larger publisher he is working through so it was very enlightening. As I get to the point where I’m ready to polish my manuscript these are things I need to start considering. To be honest, I’ve never really considered what my strategy was going to be once I was done aside from sending in the submission to agents. Chris attended several conventions to pitch to editors, which to be frank is just about enough to give me a panic attack. It wasn’t easy for him either though, so maybe that’s something I should consider.

The hard part is getting your foot in the door. Knowing people, networking, helps with that, and unfortunately, it’s just not something I’m particularly talented at. But that’s something to improve on!

The authors I’ve worked with while I was working for the publishing company often asked about using social media to promote themselves. That’s certainly an invaluable tool, but only insofar as: #1 You’ve got content to promote and #2 You’ve got a wide enough audience you can reach.

Things for me to consider, but now I’ve got to go work!