I have completed week one of NaNoWriMo on schedule. It helps that I outlined the sequel to Chaos Wolf, tentatively titled Chaos Hunt. I’m on schedule with word count slightly over the average of 1667. I was hoping to be able to pull ahead with the upcoming holidays, but so far that hasn’t happened.
I declared Chaos Wolf finished earlier. Turns out I jumped the gun. One of my beta readers pointed out that I like to use a compound sentence construction a lot. So I’ve gone back through and rewritten bits and pieces and pared the word count down further. I’m almost afraid to say that it will be done a second time. But after this clean up, I am going to let it sit for a few weeks and start research into the next phase.
And what is the next? Research. Lots of research. I have been thinking long and hard about if I am going to attempt to submit or go straight into self-publishing. I have decided that I am going to attempt to find an agent and submit to several slush piles. If after two years it does not get picked up, I will look into self-publishing it.
I’ve talked with people on both sides of the traditional versus self-publishing debate. I’ve read articles both for traditional publishing and for self-publishing. I am educating myself on my options as they change, given that what Amazon does today can completely alter the self-publishing landscape tomorrow. So I am going to be reassessing as I go. The advantage of this is that I have time to work on the sequel and a few ideas I have for other books. So if this one doesn’t sell, maybe the next one will.