What I did
- Revised Kossler, from part 2 chapter 5 to the ending
- Began the process of looking into literary agents for the now late-draft Kossler
Thoughts
First, on Kossler, my novel-now-no-longer-quite-in-progress (apologies for that terribly forced word): I've decided this year to switch projects out by month, and Kossler was this month's focus. I had all but finished it last October, and this month's revision was mostly to tamp down a few inconsistencies, and see how I felt about its (honestly few, albeit sometimes massive) swings from expected structure. And honestly: I like where it is. I doubt (notice my sudden shift to thinking in terms of publicity) it really has the kind of story that'll have any real wide appeal—if not for its violence then at least its misuse of setting, or use of mysteries that resolve into unhappy thoughts—but as an attempted piece of art, I think it's pretty nice. It's sweet where it needs to be, and when it pulls the rug out from under the reader near the end, the the lack of resolution feels appropriate, as if the whole narrative were already telling you this was where it had to end.
(It certainly helps, I'm almost certain, that I've been reading later books in Gene Wolfe's solar cycle, which end even more unresolved than anything me or Joyce Carol Oates at her weirdest could imagine, as well as Earthsea books, which have a similar slow build to sudden ending structure).
As for publishing tho: this is the real difficult part for me. Me and S—'s health insurance got switched this year, so I've had to do a lot of doctor calling, which is my excuse for not doing much on this front, but really... I find it incredibly hard to market myself, much less my work. (In part some of why this post exists at all: some practice.) But I have found one agent to try submitting to, and I've copied down some book jacket summaries of novels I really like to try to imitate. The only thing now is, I guess, to do. Hold me accountable, imaginary reader. Don't let me say I did nothing in next week's review