Step One and Step Two

You'll be pleased to know that I took a few steps tonight in the general direction of submitting Heirs of Mâvarin to another publisher, since the alternative is to play the diminishing odds associated with resubmitting to Tor. I've been nervous about the cover letter; it's always the part that makes me insecure about submitting, not the novel itself but the ancillary material. But earlier this evening, on the 15 month anniversary of the submission arriving at Tor, I did a "save as" on the old Tor letter, revised it to fix the DAW guidelines, and sent it off to the usual suspects for beta reading.


Step Two is to make the manuscript itself conform to DAW specifications. I couldn't find anything in their guidelines to indicate that anything less than a full manuscript is desired. Unless I missed something, it doesn't even call for a synopsis. This could work to my advantage. I have confidence in the book itself, certainly more so than in the narrative shorthand of a synopsis. If someone will just read the actual novel, I've got a good chance of selling it. But first it needs to have the address and word count in this particular place on the first page, and the title and page number in this other place. I think the rest is okay; they don't specify Courier over Times New Roman, and the margins are already adequate. But I edited a word or two of the text itself; I expect I'll give it another once-over before I send it out.

While I'm at it, I'm probably going to submit to a certain agent who wants a manuscript rather than just a query. It means no simultaneous submission, but if it works it will be worth it.

Karen