So I realise that I’ve been very quiet since coming back from storm chasing. Those who have somehow missed the “worst kept secret of 2015” have asked me if I’ve “stopped the writing thing”.  No, the reason I’ve been quiet is because a LOT has been happening behind the scenes these past couple of months.
I’m happy to say I now have an agent… and an exceptional agent at that.
Caitlin Blasdell of Liza Dawson Associates has an amazing industry record and I would have rated her well within the top 5 genre agents in the world even if she’d rejected me. She represents Brian McClellan and Charlie Stross amongst others and I still can’t believe that she now represents me.  I honestly cannot express into words just how stunned I am.
I’ve been trying to draft everything that’s happened into a single blog post, but I think they’re better being split out into separate articles. I’ll do one on my agent process and what worked for me (it’s a little boring so don’t expect any real insight, but I know I read a lot of similar blog posts by other authors and they helped even if just reinforcing what I already knew). I’ll also do one about the experience and the excitement surrounding it (because I sound slightly deranged in it but it’s a happy post that is the written equivalent of me having to breath into a paper bag whilst hyperventilating).  Look for those over the next couple of weeks.
So for now, let me just say that I’m hard at work on doing rewrites on Black As Knight. The editorial feedback she gave me was so incredibly helpful and as much as I loved the book before, this rewritten version is going to be incredible. Progress is a little slower than my first drafts but I’m still a good 20-30,000 words into the rewrite.
As you can imagine, I’m very, very excited about the future (I’ve had to level up my aspirations as a writer many, many levels over the past couple of weeks) but after a few weeks of bouncing around with glee, I’m knuckling down and getting the work done.
Working hard is what got me here, and that’s what will carry me on. And the end of the day, whilst I’m enjoying the journey it’s not at the expense of getting stuff done.