Last year I had a grand plan to blog every month. It's June 7th and my last post was January 1st, so you see how well that went.
I have, however, for the first time in two years, spent a decent amount of time writing this year. After my beloved middle grade steam/ecopunk book that everyone was SURE would get me an agent went nowhere fast I tried to start a whole lot of stories, included the ill-fated romance that made me think I might be coming out of a dry spell (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha is what I say to that now) and the quite possibly brilliant Christmas ghost story idea for which I have a lovely, edited outline. But I could never get beyond 20,000 words, and usually not beyond a couple chapters.
I'm almost 2/3 of the way through my current manuscript, my second attempt to write for adults but this time in a genre I enjoy without reservation. It's a cozy mystery. It combines a setting based on my favorite place to vacation as a child, a protagonist that shares a lot of my characteristics while fully being her own person, and a lot of quirky secondary characters. Meet the moodboard for Ordinary Crime, because of course I have a moodboard.
This is the most commercial thing I've ever written. Cozy Mysteries are the second most popular genre, just behind romance (which I made a futile attempt to write). Does this mean I'll be sure to get an agent and a book deal if I actually finish this? Of course not. However, I'm hoping I'll at least get a higher request rate if I actually manage to get this thing query ready.
But what about the actual title of this post, Beth? We're getting there. I'm mostly concentrating on the WIP, but I recently participated in an off-Twitter Pitch contest, and ended up with three requests for queries for Harbor Lightkeep. So, expecting nothing, I sent them off. Two were from agents I somehow never managed to query in the two years I queried the manuscript and one was from an agent I queried with an earlier version. I did disclose this in the query letter, to be clear.
I also found out from a writing friend that a small but solid press that most often only takes agented manuscripts is open to unagented manuscripts this week. Years ago, someone commented on a tweet about my Nutcracker portal fantasy that it sounded like something this press might publish. I looked into it, but at the time I wasn't quite ready to veer away from the agent route. By the time I thought I might consider submitting directly to a small press they were closed to unagented submissions. The chances they'll be interested are tiny, but tiny is still more than zero.
I'm dedicating most of my heart and mind right now to the mystery. I love all my other books and want to see them on shelves someday, but I've come to be okay with the idea that my debut may not be middle grade. That doesn't mean the books will for sure never be published. If the small press snaps up Mousecracker or one of the agents who requested a query falls in love with Harbor Lightkeep, awesome. But if they don't, it's okay. The next thing is already well underway, really and truly underway for the first time in a long time.
