The First Accolades

Writing comes naturally to me which is a boon during the drafting and rewriting stages. Of course, the butterflies arrive with polishing the synopsis and making those last final touches to the manuscript just before sending it out to be seen by strangers' eyes. This is followed by self-doubt and wondering whether or not the idea for your story merits being published. Is it really good enough? Does it fit in with what the literary agents are looking for?

My first manuscript went through a thorough editing with an editor, followed by rewrites, and with several tweaks here and there will be sent out to retest the waters next month. My first attempt ended in a fizz. Now, I'm ready to make further attempts, and while this is going on I will be working on other manuscripts that follow the premise of the first.

To keep my spirits up with future writing will be the words from my editor, Michael Carr, on the overall aspect of my first manuscript:

... You have a wonderfully fertile imagination, and the ability to bring those imagined situations and characters to life in such a way that even the bizarre sounds somehow believable. You do horror well, and that is no mean feat, but you’ve done something much trickier: evoking in the reader an empathy for the monstrous. There is also a certain strangeness about your writing. I mean this as a very high compliment. That strangeness, permeating every word and existing between the words as well, says to the reader, “Come, enter this world I have made for you. It is not quite the same as the one you inhabit day by day without a second thought.”