A little bit about my path to writing and publishing - Part 3 of 5

Why Operation Devil's Fire was NOT the first novel I finished writing and becoming a disciplined writer

My wife came up with an idea for a modern day thriller (about a serial killer), which I really liked and fleshed out by early June, 2005, a month later. This was why I had stopped working on ODF. I finished the first draft of that book, called Border Gap, on February 3, 2006, just under 8 months later. The difference? I made myself stick to a daily word count of 600 (about 2 book pages) that I had to hit. If I missed it, I had to make it sometime before the writing week (Sunday – Saturday) was over. My average daily word count was 676 over that period. I had learned writing discipline! By the way, at the time, I was working 50 hours a week and traveling back and forth to Chicago for another 9 hours a week.

The pain (not kidding) of trying to find an agent

From late April, 2006 through March, 2007 I sent 70 query letters to agents for Border Gap. A query letter is one page and briefly introduces you and the book for which you’re asking representation. You specifically ask the agent if you may send them a partial manuscript (about 50 pages). I received exactly one request for the partial. The rest were either rejections or I received no answer whatsoever from the agent. Grr.

I sent the partial on and hoped. The agency in question was a husband-wife team. My hopes were eventually dashed when they wrote back declining further interest. However, they had both read it and they finished their rejection email to me with:

“We agree that you have good, strong talent. Keep writing. Keep polishing your work. Best of luck.”

Well, okay, cool. Something’s not quite right with my writing, but it shows promise.

Ah, man, really?

I knew I had a choice: I could be angry with them for rejecting my masterpiece, or I could take to heart what they’d said. So I re-read the opening pages of my manuscript. It had been perhaps a month since I last did that. I finished the first page, which introduced the victim, a young woman. It was great! Then I got to the exciting part of the opening where the killer strikes for the first time. My eyeballs practically popped out of my head. In the paragraph describing the killing, I had started 6 (six!) consecutive sentences with the word “He.” Palm plant. Ah, man, really? How did I miss that? Now I saw what they saw. Raw, but unpolished, talent.

Back to Operation Devil’s Fire

While working on all the damn query letters, I started writing on ODF again. From May 29, 2006 through October 7, 2006 (132 days, 4 ½ months) I wrote an average of 675 words a day, almost identical to my work on Border Gap! By the way, both books were in the 100,000 word range. My discipline was holding up. I had written 2/3 of the book in 25% of the time it had taken for the first 1/3.

From January 2, 2007 to October 19, 2007, I sent out 50 query letters and, again, received exactly one request for the partial manuscript. I heard back from the agent the very next day. “I'm afraid this didn't come across as something that would work for us commercially.”

Well, hell. Now what?

Three years.

Two novels.

And nothing to show for it.

Then comes another idea from my brilliant wife. Which led us directly to the Sgt. Dunn novels.

Coming next: A little bit about my path to writing and publishing – Part 4, Chess as the trigger. Published! Operation Devil’s Fire Published! Charged up!