Tomorrow, it will have been one solid week that I’ve been querying my new book, titled, “Jade Moon Waning.”
Jade Moon is my second book and, on the day that I decided that it was ready to go out, I sat back and thought to myself, “What next?”
What next, indeed?
One of the ways that I know that I’m getting close to the end of a project is when another idea bubbles to the surface. Now, I’m not talking about something that I’m using to distract myself from working on the current project. That doesn’t happen to me very often to begin with. No, this is something persistent. More importantly, it’s something that will let me put it on the back burner without struggle.
So there I am: At the end of this phase of the project, and I’ve got something else lined up and ready to go. You’d think that the next step would be obvious.
You’d think that…
Instead, what I did was get set to go over my first book, “Chasing the Kestrel” one more time.
Why?
Back then, my feet – so it seemed – were more firmly beneath me. Sure there was uncertainty, and the unexpected. Kestrel nearly sold but, at the last minute, didn’t. But all that seemed more distant.
Now it’s right there, staring me in the face. It’s only natural to want to go back to someplace that felt safer, right?
And I still believe in the story. That’s part of the trap – if trap it was.
Trap or no, revising Kestrel wouldn’t have changed *anything*. It had already been out on sub. I cant query agents with it. In fact, the only way that Kestrel might move forward is if, after signing with a new agent, they feel that it can be revised enough – and enough time has passed – for it to be fresh again. That’s it.
I owe a small debt of gratitude to Chuck Wendig, who talked on his blog about writing from a place of fear.
I can’t tell you exactly what the post was about – I never did read the entire thing. I stopped when I realized that I wasn’t doing that. I was, in fact, several steps down the path well-travelled already.
And that’s not going to take me anywhere.
So I’m finally setting Kestrel aside. It’s not like I’ve been working on it all this time, but I guess I’d always held out hope that, somehow, it would work out. And there’s still a chance that it might. But I’m not going to dwell on it.
If – and only if – my next agent is interested in looking at it, will I bring it out again.
The visit, however brief to that world was nice, and more than a little bittersweet. But there are other worlds, unseen, uncounted, that I’d like to visit.
Who knows what I’ll find out there…