Sunday, January 03, 2010

More Serial (No Filler)

Yes, it's Sunday night, so another chapter of The Mangrove Legacy is up. We're back to Alice and her adventures in the eerily abandoned villa where the mysterious Gilet de Sauvinage has secreted her, while Lizzie still travels with the agreeable Mr Tilney, still recovering from his gunshot wound from the duelists.

I have reached 90K words in this little story in increments of about 500 words once a week. This is the painless way to write a novel. On the plus side, well -- it was painless. In fact, it's been a great deal of fun. On the minus side, it's beginning to get too long to submit as a novel. Most historical romances (which this might be considered) seldom go beyond 70K. A few publishers take MSS up to 90K. As I haven't wrapped this up, I suppose it's going to be a bit longer than that. What to do? I hardly know.

Of course, some publishing houses won't take this because it's appeared on-line already. Some won't take it because Gothics aren't supposed to be funny. I suppose there are myriad reasons publishers won't take it (it's a rather loopy story after all). Perhaps I'll just let it unspool at its current pace and slap it together for a Lulu book with some suitably Gothic illos from some very talented artist that I know.

The web is making possible all kinds of publishing ventures; I was saying earlier today the that word of 2010 for me (and probably many other folk) is "collaboration"; I suspect it may well be the word of this century. Multiple formats is another good one; did you know you can get stories of mine through Anthology Builder, where you can put together custom collections of short stories? You can get other stories of mine over at Feedbooks. Of course, you can also purchase real live print books at Amazon, too.

Trying to be a dandelion; suggestions welcome.

5 comments:

CL said...

Suggestion:

Finished the story in however time you see fit (even if it means running it for another 6 months), and worry about editing it later.

Once you have a finish product in it's raw form, then you have the basis to do with it as you please. Who knows? The re-edited story may not be the same as the original.

Just a thought...

C. Margery Kempe said...

Thanks, Cranky! I forgot to mention (I think) that upon finishing this serial, I would immediately start another. It's a habit now that I could not do without. And of course a certain pirate queen would be likely to show up in some guise in the next one as well. Black Ethel is just too good a character.

:-D

C. Margery Kempe said...

I think the next one would be more Dickensian, but I fear that Bleak Expectations has set the bar quite high. Maybe it should be more Wilkie Collins-ish or a little Gaskell-like...

Todd Mason said...

Well, you certainly could go in a Jane Gaskell direction...oh...you meant Elizabeth....

C. Margery Kempe said...

I'm not averse to a little of each.