Finis?

Done, finis, complete … okay, not done done but done. I finished my novel Refuge this week. It is a complete rewrite; 58,627 words.

I know I’m not finished … there’s still a lot of work ahead. (I accumulated pages of notes as I slogged through this latest iteration.) I’ve learned that writing the book is but a fraction of the work involved in the journey to publication.

I still need to polish the bible and refine definitions, write a multi-page summary, a one paragraph summary and a single sentence summary and oh … find an agent (I’ve decided I’m going to follow the “traditional” route to publication).

It’ a daunting task. The agent thing is probably going to be the hardest part of the whole journey. I have to do a ton of research to locate someone who works with science fiction authors, accepts new clients, makes a good match, and likes what I’ve produced.

What agents like seems so hard to quantify.

Last year, I attended a conference and sat in on a panel discussion that featured four agents critiquing first pages from a variety of attendee manuscripts. A page was read, then each agent explained what she liked (or disliked) regarding the submission. One author’s first page spent a paragraph describing Victorian wallpaper in a study room. One of the agents suggested that this page caught her attention because she liked wallpaper. Wallpaper? Really? But, that may have been enough to get this person to read beyond the first page. Isn’t that what authors strive for? Another agent did not like the submission because it had too much detail for a first page.

Regardless of what lies ahead, I’m up to the task. I started this journey a number of years past and I’ve come too far to quit.

Have a suggestion or agent/submission story you’d like to share? Leave a comment below.