I Went to NYC and Met with my Agent and it was Fun

Believe it or not, in the midst of all this Italy-mania, I'm still actually writing. I even got quite a fair share of writing done while on the trip, on trains mostly. It was pretty cool. I just took a little notebook (like a real notebook, the kind with paper) and a pen and got some writing in whenever I could. Writing by hand was an interesting experience; I'd be interesting in attempting an entire novel that way one day. I'm really glad I did it, too. I've gotten into a great routine with Dark Immolation lately, and I was worried that going on a trip would throw me out of that, but I think taking the time to write while on vacation really helped me stay focused. And it was kind of cool--writing on location, basically.

One perk of going to Italy was a 12-hour layover in NYC, where I got to have lunch with Sam and a couple others from JABberwocky. That was awesome. It was cool to get some actual facetime with the agency, see their offices (which are now in a prime location just a few blocks from Times Square), meet a lot of the other agents that work there, and so forth. I had fish and chips at an Irish pub whose name and location both elude me. But it was delicious. And Krystyna, one of the foreign rights agents at JABberwocky, had some notes for me on Duskfall that were really fantastic. She gave me some great ideas for the direction I want to go in and what I want to focus on for the next revision of the novel. In fact, based on that excitement and some other conversations we had, I've put work on Dark Immolation on hold and jumped right into revising Duskfall again. Version 6.0 this time.

As you can see I'm about 12% through, although that doesn't count a lot of my own prewriting and own notes as I've read through Krystyna's suggestions and some of the thoughts some editors had who have passed on the manuscript. I'm hoping now that a lot of that preliminary stuff is taken care of, the revision will really take off and I'll be done with it in a couple of weeks or so. It's going well so far, and I'm pleasantly surprised by a lot of things in the novel--I really think it's got some good moments. That said, I don't think it's achieved it's full potential yet (not even close in some ways), so I'm happy to take another pass at it.

Anyway, so that's what's going on with writing these days. Another revision, and then after that I'll probably jump back into Dark Immolation...or, perhaps, depending on how things go, a more direct sequel to Duskfall.

In the meantime, I've still got two more Italy posts queued up, a couple posts to wrap up my musings on story structure, and much more to come!