MathiasCavanaugh.com

I encourage people to say what they really think whenever they are reading my work in progress (Under the Darkened Moon). I haven’t had it in a formal review setting since I started the live read and final draft process. But, prior to that, I got a lot of feedback from a variety of sources including: my standard review group, writer friends of mine (published and unpublished), and people who I know and who like to read fantasy.

I’m not someone who isn’t willing to let people, whether they liked the book or not, have their say. Here is a sampling of the good and the bad that I got as feedback: Read more…

We all love to turn to inspirational advice when we feel like we just cannot go on down our chosen path.  One of the most common such pieces of advice is that quitters never win, and winners never quit.  It sounds real great!  It pumps you up!  It gives you the motivation to plow ahead!

The truth is that inspirational phrases like this are half truths.  Yes, quitters  never win because they give up before they do so.  And yes, winners never have quit because they have won.  But there is an important caveat to this old saying that is missing.  That caveat is that by not quitting doesn’t mean you will win. Read more…

I have begun compiling a list of literary agents to whom I will query and otherwise send my manuscript to once it is completed. My plans are that after this latest edit of Under the Darkened Moon is completed and the review group has given their comments that I will do a polishing edit. Everyone reading the story seems to think it good and have only minor comments such a the occasional awkward sentence or the misspelled word the spell checker missed. But once that polishing edit is complete, I am allotting one day per chapter so about a month and a half, I have to have some idea of what to do with it.

Side note:
I already had an encounter with one lit agent who a friend referred to me. She claimed to be accepting epic fantasy for review and lobbied for me to send her a sample. However upon me sending her the first 50 pages of my novel she then claimed that she was not looking for epic fantasy. Her web profile, however, says that she is. I don’t know whether or not she is just confused as to the what the genre is that she claims to want submissions on or she just hated the story and did not want to say so. Either way, it certainly annoyed me because I went though the bother of doing a polish on the first 50 pages and rushed it off to her.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine today who has been repeatedly published in the genre of science fiction.  I am withholding his name for reasons that I think will be obvious by the end of this post.

For the past few years my friend has been trying to break out of sci-fi and into another genre.  He has however been repeatedly hassled by the publisher of his past sci-fi books to present them with a new manuscript.  It is important to note that he has no contractual obligation with his current publisher, they just want him to write another book because they see him as an established author who can sell books.  However, as he put it to me, he just does not feel that he has anything worth writing about in sci-fi anymore.  But he does have ideas for other genres.  Unfortunately his current publisher does not publish said genres.

He has been polite in refusing them but confided in me that he was becoming very annoyed with the constant badgering.  Apparently this publisher is very light in the funnel.  The other day when they called he mentioned my name and gave me a reference because they also publish fantasy and let slip that they are interested in such as well. They told him that they were not interested in developing new talent and, such was his take, that they wanted to stick with past sucessess.  Yes, he said, even if what those past successes gave them a subpar story to work with.  They said they wanted “anything” from him and commenting that “quality does not matter.” Read more…

This weekend I am going to set down and do some free writing. My plan is to post what I write here on the site.

The ground rules I have laid out are simple. No topic has been chosen. Genre will be fantasy or science fiction. No in depth editing will be allowed. Editing will be limited to only the last ten words written at any give time. This means that once a word is on the paper and is past this set limit it stays regardless of grammatical correctness, spelling or other such faults.

We will see how this goes.