While scrolling through BlueSky the other day (if you’re not on BlueSky, I highly suggest it–especially to get away from the Musk of it all), I ran across a series of posts by Joel Brigham (@joelbrigham.bsky.social) going over the query process. One of the things it led me to do was rework the pitch section of my query letter to tighten it up and get it below the 350 word limit–something I’d known actually known was a thing.
The other was being introduced to the Writing Day Workshops. I went to peruse their website (https://www.writingdayworkshops.com/) and found one in Atlanta in March. I’ve signed up as well as slotting in to pitch to one of the agents there. Talking to other folks, I’ve heard good things about and am looking forward to a day going into writing things. Not having to travel to another city is also helpful.
It’s definitely filling a niche since SAGA isn’t happening this year. Although, Hartness has been very clear it will be back next year, which means I need to keep that on my calendar–especially since I’ll hopefully be working on book 3 of the Diamond Imperium during that time period.
Speaking of writing, I took a break (unplanned, but still) from drafting The Thousand Doors due to illness followed by dental issues. It also allowed me to step back from the story and get my head re-centered. During that break, a couple of things settled into place.
First, I need to add some to The Sanctuary Lock. Specifically, I need an overall threat that drives Alma and Runo to actively go after the means of opening the titular lock. It was there in my head, but tightening up my pitch made me realize I’d not been as explicit about it as it needed to be. So that will add, I’m guessing, another 5K words or so, specifically in the sections in Leppa, Itzalen Arraila, Andris, and Colmar.
The second is I took a step back to write a short fiction piece. With Fantasy magazine relaunching, I wanted something I could submit to them during their submission period next week. It’s tentatively named “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables,” and it’s out to a couple of friends to read. My goal is to get it tightened up this weekend and ready to submit on Sunday to Fantasy magazine. If nothing else, it’ll eventually become part of a series of Diamond Imperium short stories tangential to the main story lines of the novels.
Today I’m going to work on figuring out where and how to add the looming threat(tm) to The Sanctuary Lock as well as going through the latest Agent alert email to send out new queries (with the new and improved query letter).
