Energematrice6

Beta Reading

Beta reading and editing are complete! You can’t tell from the picture, but the manuscript for Brightstar is like three inches thick. I’m a bit amazed all the beta readers made it through… Well, mostly.

Final tally:
Ghosted: 1
Didn’t read: 2
Partial read with feedback: 2
Full read with feedback: 9

I have a bit of a story to tell as I go through this post about how tremendously God blessed me in this whole process. For the past six or seven months, my wife and I have both been praying that God would open the RIGHT doors for me as this book was completed–whether that’s another job or an appropriate publisher.

As my writing phase was winding down, about two months ago, I asked two people I considered something between acquaintances and friends (people I knew only through social media) to help me with the book. The first I asked to be a beta reader. He agreed. It turns out that was a door God opened, and he was an incredible blessing.

All I can say, even to the people who didn’t have time to read it all the way through, is thank you. Thank you for taking the time to help me. You have no idea how much it means to me. I am genuinely in your debt.

…(And speaking of debts, I owe them all a signed copy once it’s actually published. They totally earned it.)

My biggest takeaway from the beta reading feedback was that people came up with radically different feedback–except where they didn’t. Apparently reading chapters 1-3 was something akin to eating uranium pellets. (One beta reader told me that his wife said, “No adolescent could parse that language.”)

That leads me to the next bit.

That Pesky Edit

The reason this post is in *late* March instead of *early* March is that I also finished the final major edit… and no, I don’t want to talk about the edit. (Have I mentioned how many times I’ve read this book over the past six months??? I’m not aiming to RECITE it.)

Pretty sure the only thing that actually got me through was the encouragement I got from my beta readers.

Publishing!

Now, I’m in the process of submitting the book to the one publisher I’ve definitely decided to pursue, and that’s where the story really takes a turn.

Up ’til now, I had zero contacts in the publishing industry. None.

This brings me to the second friend who gave me a hand up. You see, when I asked him if he’d be willing to read the book and recommend it to his followers if he liked it, his reply was along the lines of, “You know my uncle is a publisher, right?”

…uhh. No… No, I didn’t know that.

…And so the book is submitted. Morgan James Publishing gets somewhere around 5000 manuscript submissions per year and only accepts about 200.

Beta reading and editing complete.

God willing, may this be an open door.

It’s DONE! …And so am I.

Book one of the Energematrice6 cycle, working title “Brightstar” is done and off to my beta readers!

A friend told me he thought it would be a euphoric feeling–finishing writing a book. Not for me. I’m not sure how most people feel, but for me it was mostly just a relief.

I swear, it takes a really peculiar variety of mental dysfunction to do it at all.

So what’s it about?

The whole time I was writing the book, I told people it’s like C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ for a post-Star Wars generation. I did capture some essence of that, I think, but now that it’s done, I sort of think it reads more like “Homer’s Odyssey in Space.” I suppose technically the genre is probably “Young Adult Space Opera” or some such, but genre is a tool for publishers and bookstores, not so much for writers. I certainly never set out to write a particular genre (and somehow trying to pin the work to a particular category feels wrong). I just knew what I wanted to write.

I suppose a sneak peak is in order. Here’s what I’m proposing for the cover summary:
Nate, an autistic boy from our world, is thrust into a different universe–one whose very foundations are built on mysterious forces. There, he has no memory of his past and his autism is refocused and transformed into a near superpower. Caught up in a mission he barely understands from his shattered memories, Nate and his new friends wander the stars while dark forces attempt to destroy everything around them.

…And now I’m done.

So do I self-publish? Find a publisher? No fair. This feels like the beginning of the process instead of the end.

Just done.

(Yeah I thought I’d be a bit more euphoric too. Ah well. It’s still DONE.)