Exposing myself again!

Well I took out and dusted down my novel, and struggled through a re-draft of my covering letter and then reached for my stack of Writers' News magazines to find the next potential publisher.

As it happens in this months issue which I received this week (oddly dated April 2009), there was one on page 3 - Snowbooks, who even better, only accept e-mail submissions. That meant there was absolutely no recourse to my usual delaying tactic of having to print out copy and find an envelope. I had a browse around the site, www.snowbooks.com and it looks interesting. A quick google search (I always do this) showed up no negative reports about them, so I composed a blurb and a bio, carefully read, re-read and checked the submission guidlines and hit the 'Send' button.

Interestingly I read the rejection letter before I sent it, as they publish it on the website, so I'm not even worried about what it might say!

Now I feel much better about myself, but I'm not going to stop there, because I know that there are many more possibilities in my stack of magazines, and bookmarks that I've been saving up until I'd finished the latest draft, which I've now done.

In case you are interested, this is what I came up with for the blurb and the bio:

Blurb:
Roxy Harker is a single mother, a recovering drug addict and a vampire. Thrust into a shadowy London underworld controlled by immortal beings, Roxy has to come to terms with her need for blood while raising her two year old daughter, Claudia.
She becomes caught up in an ancient feud which threatens the future of humanity itself, and only Roxy can stand in the way of the coming Darkness.

Author bio:
Bryan Vaughan has been telling tales for over thirty years, and learned to craft stories playing Dungeons and Dragons and other, darker roleplaying games. He has become increasingly drawn to horror writing, seeking what it is to be afraid and the slow realisation that however bad things may appear, they can always get worse! Roxy has been haunting him since university at London ten years ago, so he finally sat down and started typing. This is her story.

Day two

So here we are, day two. The thing to do is to write every day, so that's my goal. Even though no one will read this, in all likelihood. This will be more like a diary, charting my writing and the thoughts and steps I go through, so forgive the stream-of-consciousness flavour.

I'm working on two books at the moment. One is called Betrayed, which is a sequel to Taken, a story about single mother Roxy who becomes a vampire and becomes caught up in an ancient feud and has to look after her young daughter while coming to terms with her need for blood and nocturnal habits.

How did that sound? My biggest problem at the moment is trying to summarise Taken in one sentence so that I can describe it in a covering letter to a potential publisher or agent and attract their attention.

The fundamental 'new idea' as far as I can tell is a vampire with a baby. The rest of the story, while gripping and gritty, is essentially secondary.

Betrayed continues her story as she learns what it is to be a vampire and reacts to decisions that she made in Taken, which have unforseen consequences.

The other story is a Sci-fi story which follows the consequences of a supernova occurring near to Earth. The world is bathed in lethal radiation which sterilises the planet and makes life difficult for the inhabitants. I'm still in the planning stage of this story, and only have a working title of 'Poison Sun' for the moment. I'm drawing on my astrophysics education to help me write this one, which will help as a marketing tool, unlike Taken, for which I don't have any particular skills I can brag about (apart from being a parent I suppose)

Anyway. I should probably just stick with the sentence above to describe Taken, and start sending out letters. I'm pretty sure that I won't get an e-mail from a publisher asking me if I have any novels that I'd like publishing!