We're heading into award season and I recently got news that Stay Dead was listed as one of the best suspense thrillers of 2014 by Suspense Magazine.
Complete list of winners in the suspense/thriller category:
Peter May
Jenny Milchman
m.c. Grant
Lisa Unger
Alan Jacobson
Anne Frasier
Jon Land
Allison Brennan
Steven James
Other news:
I finished the third Elise Sandburg book in November. Right now it's scheduled for a July 25 release, but that could change. AND damn if I still don't have a title. :D Nobody's fault but mine. I have a list of possibilities, but nothing feels 100% right.
What I'm working on now:
This is a long, boring story. This summer I was invited to be a part of a super-secret project involving a big and exciting concept. I can't go into a lot of detail because... secret. The whole concept was so compelling that I couldn't say no. I wrote a post-apocalypse crime fiction story (50,000 words) for this project.
When will I learn not to get involved with new companies? I should have learned my lesson with Quartet Press. Remember them? Didn't think so. They folded before they started, but not before sucking up a lot of my time and leaving me with nothing to show for it. So it happened again with this super-secret project. I was wrapping up the first draft of my story when things fell apart, and now I've spent a total of five months on this story—first writing it for a high-concept project, then later trying to revamp the super-secret story into straight crime fiction.
If you've ever done a major revamp you know it can take ten times as long as simply starting from scratch. It's like trying to remove the baking soda from a recipe once you realize you added it by mistake. Yeah, you could dump it completely, but you used this really fantastic chocolate that you'll never find again.
So now my post-apocalyptic book has dwindled to 15,000 words of straight crime fiction. And it should be 80,000. Basically I'm starting over. Sigh. Hope to have it finished by June. It actually DOES have a title, but it's too early to share. Present day crime fiction set in Minneapolis.
Why not see if you can get a release for the original story? It should be an interesting read.
ReplyDeleteThere were several reasons I didn't pursue that, but the main ones were:
Delete1) The book was part of a larger whole and wasn't as powerful on its own.
2) It wasn't my genre. In the beginning I was hesitant to sign on because it would mean diluting my brand and adding to reader confusion with yet another genre in my repertoire. Once things got derailed it seemed logical to stick with crime fiction.
Okay, so I have now typed this comment 4 times, thank you very much Blogger. Grr. Anyway, where as I? I'm sorry to hear that you wasted your creative juices on a failed endeavor. I hope that it won't end up being a total waste, though ugh to having to do a rewrite. On a positive note, hooray for your award! I hope you come up with a title for book 3 soon, since that will be the next one to garner an award. :)
ReplyDeleteArgh, Blogger!!!!! And thanks! ;)
DeleteTheresa