For no good reason other than pure curiosity I gathered together all of the “Zaneverse” stories I’ve written and totaled up how many words they have. Assuming a standard of 300 words per novel-sized page… it turns out I’ve cranked out around 1,200 pages. This surprised me and initially impressed me; then I realized that Stephen King could probably bang out a 1,200 page novel in a single drunken weekend and I promptly became less impressed with myself.
The question remains what to do with it all. For a year I tried going through a literary agent to get “Novel 1” published, but he turned out to be a bit of a disappointment (apparently health issues… shrug). One of the short stories was submitted for a sci-fi anthology… but I never heard back, not even a notice of receipt of the manuscript, never mind an acceptance or rejection. Grrr. “Novel 0” is something I’m currently hacking away at, and it is specifically intended to *not* be published; it’s weird and from a literary point of view not needed, in much the same way the “Solo” movie wasn’t needed. However, having the origin story of the main characters put down on paper (so to speak) will help me keep things straight. Plus, I just wanted to do it.
Anybody know any literary agents who might want to be in on the ground floor of the next publishing powerhouse, sure to leave Harry Potter in the dust? Self publishing is always an option, but given that I have neither skill nor talent in the area of effective self promotion, that’s not terribly appealing.
