Murder and Matchmaking
A novel mashup of Sherlock Holmes and Pride & Prejudice
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The end is just the beginning
I finished my novella ‘Mother of the Baskervilles’ today. There’s a warm glow of satisfaction whenever you complete a draft, and some times, like today, it can be accompanied by a slight sense of sadness. It’s like saying goodbye to a friend or coming to the end of a weekend or holiday. For now at least, the fun of the first draft is over.
Of course the fun and work are nowhere near over. There’s the second draft to come, then sending it out to readers, waiting impatiently for feedback and then you start all the rewrites and edits.
However, it’s good to take a break before diving into the redrafting and editing. So I guess it is goodbye, at least for a while, to Mrs Baskerville and her misadventures.
Now I need to focus something new from my ‘to write’ list.
Options (new material):
- Mistress Sugarplum’s boarding school for wayward fairies – a prison break story about rebellious pixies
- Untitled Regency-era vampire short story
- Cyberpunk/Noir detective story
- Daughter of the Scarlet Pimpernel
Then there’s always the possibility that I might hear back soon from my readers with some feedback about ‘The Land beneath the Shadows’ and which would mean starting my next edit.
Decisions, decisions…
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3 comments:
I always find it hard deciding what to do next - always so many things to chose from and the list just seems to get bigger, not shorter!
I hope you hear back soon from your readers :-)
At "Fantastic Voyages", an audience member asked whether anyone had written a novella, and if so, where they would submit it, as novellas tend to be hard to place. Do you have a "somewhere" in mind for "Mother of the Baskervilles" when it is ready to be sent out?
(Great title, by the way!)
Thanks for the comments. I actually had another idea whilst cooking dinner which is turning out to be one of those loud and demanding stories that will probably have to be written immediately so that it will stop bothering me. So much for progress on the to do list.
Tim - I just finished listening to the 'Fantastic Voyages' this afternoon. It was awesome and really inspiring so thanks to you and Helen for that.
'Mother of the Baskervilles' is the longest story (I think 21,000 words counts as a novella rather than a short story but I'm never sure about the exact cut off between the two terms), in a collection I'm working on with the working title of 'The seven most dangerous women in Regency England'. A series of Austen-esque stories about assassins, serial killers, vampire slayers, and swashbuckling heroines. I don't have somewhere specific in mind but Quirk put out 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' so I might try there (or similar publishers).
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