Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

3/6/2016

In the words of Jack Johnson I have spent the past month Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. Why you may ask? Well I finished my novel!!! Yes that totally deserves three exclamation marks. Or maybe five since I've been working on it, on and off, for five years. I might still have been working on it if I hadn't heard from the lovely people at Hodderscape, THE home for Sci-fi and fantasy books in the UK.

Last August a friend told me that Hodderscape were holding an open submission for un-agented writers of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and speculative fiction. Basically me!

It was an amazing opportunity because publishers normally never have anything to do with you unless you have an agent and I didn't think there was any point getting an agent until my novel was finished. Another important part of the open submission was you didn't have to have a completed manuscript. I had a completed draft but there was lots more I wanted to do on it. I cane tell you that once I submitted my 10,000 words I definitely had a fire lit under me to get it done.

Hodderscape said that if you hadn't heard from them by 1st January 2016 then your novel had gone through to a second round of readings. I counted down to midnight with an extra element of tension and hope and sure enough I didn't have a rejection email. Hurrah! It was a good start to the new year.

I've done my best not to think about it and keep going with my edits, polishing it until I was happy. On the 13th March I got the best email I've ever received saying that they loved my story and wanted to read the whole thing! So began a month of insane rewrites and edits as I worked to get it to a stage where I was happy to show it to anyone. Yes I'm a little crazy, nobody else had read my novel, apart from a few extracts before I submitted it to the publishers. There wasn't time and it didn't feel right, so I pushed on. My grandma has since read it twice but I've not shown anyone else.

I'm still Sitting, Waiting, Wishing, praying for good news. I will let you know how I get on. Feel free to send me some good luck vibes and you can Sit, Wait and Wish with me too.