The Great Divide

By Bob McCrillis

Leaving the cloistered world of writing a novel to take a few baby steps into the arena of publishing has been as sudden and sharp a change as stepping out of a spruce thicket to find myself standing on the head of the Old Man In The Mountain with the whole state of New Hampshire spread out under my feet. For many, that would be awe inspiring. For me, it was terrifying.

Bob cropped tight

Terrifying and, at first exposure, insurmountable. The numbers speak for themselves according to UNESCO in 2013, there were a little over three-hundred thousand new titles published in the United States. If we assume that those that were published were a small percent of the manuscripts submitted, I think it’s fair to say that my novel is competing for attention with ten or fifteen million other works. The experts say there are around one thousand literary agencies in the United States so…well, you can do the arithmetic. Even if all of my assumptions are off by fifty percent, there’s a huge number of manuscripts fighting for attention. Continue reading “The Great Divide”

Help From an Unexpected Place

By Bob McCrillis

Sometimes, agents are as nutty as writers, or so it seemed.

On his submissions requirements was ‘if you haven’t read and absorbed all of the Query Shark archives, you’re not ready to query’. Query Shark? What the heck was that? And why would I need to review its archives?

Bob cropped tightBeing a compulsive rule-follower, I dutifully Googled Query Shark and found the blog. Okay, a blog about queries might have some good information before the pitch for an online tutorial course for the low, low price of only …

I clicked on and discovered a treasure trove that I would have hoarded for myself, if I could – why help the competition? My good angel prevailed. Continue reading “Help From an Unexpected Place”