Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Done. Next.

Four Dogs is officially submitted to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.

There's nothing I can do at this point but wait until the next round to find out if my pitch as advanced, and my excerpt moves on to be reviewed by Amazon Vine Reviewers.

While I'm not holding my breath, I like to think my pitch, and the concept of Four Dogs will be good enough to move me through to the next round.

Either way, I won't know until Feb. 24, and so, it's time to move on to other things.

I finally saved up enough to buy a Macbook Pro (and said goodbye to my first love, my iBook). I have AutoArt to create and send to press for the next two weeks, and then it's time to get back to writing.

What I'm getting to is a question. I have two books I'm currently working on, and I'd like to narrow it down and focus on one of them.

Three Dogs is the sequel to Four Dogs. Split Ends is an adult humorous/mystery. Work on Three Dogs in case Four Dogs wins and I need to follow up with an option book? Or jump out of that genre, and do something different?

Now, I have to be honest, I think I was born to write humorous mysteries a la Carl Hiaasen of 15 years ago. Nothing makes me happier than making people laugh.

But I need to be pragmatic. It's not about what I want to write, but what I can sell. I have to write to the market, and not to the muse.

Right?

Before you make your decision, I'll share two excerpts with you. In a couple days, I'll upload a short excerpt of Three Dogs. A couple days after that, I'll upload a short excerpt from Split Ends.

In the meantime, time for me to get to work on AutoArt so I can finish paying for my new toy.

j

6 comments:

  1. As an official Chris Moore fanatic, there's a market for adult fictional humor.

    But I'll save my official opinion for the excerpts.

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  2. Me too, Lisa. Chris Moore is probably my favorite contemporary author.

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  3. I love him, too. I think you can meld the two genres, tones, I really do. Sneak in the humor wherever you can, and fashion the story so that it can handle the humor -- usually, if the MAIN plot is more thriller/suspense, for example, you can find the humor in a secondary character....

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  4. Excellent point, Jody. In Split Ends, Patrick is the comic relief. Or, at least, I hope he is. Writing humor is so, so hard.

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  5. you're a natural at humor. i say the market changes too frequently to write to it, and you should write what's moving you.

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