Sunday, October 27, 2013

Finished! Writing the Mystery Novel

I finished The Glen Valley Compact this morning and sent the final chapters to Deb, my reader. So far, she likes the novel though she notes some problems I've written about here, inconsistencies of names being one I must go back and correct.  At the end of the book, I discuss the rain during one of the murders but when I went back to that chapter, I found I hadn't written about rain at all!  I will have to do correct that.

I've given Deb a questionnaire to see if I need to make improvements. One good thing, she didn't figure out "whodunnit" right away, even as the list of suspects narrowed.  I am pleased about that because my friends knew who did it in the third chapter when I read them the first draft.

The next question is whether I should send the book to a publisher or self-publish. There would be more money to be made if a publishing firm took it, but from acceptance to book would likely take about two years. At this point in my life, I want to see the book in my hand.

Recently, a friend's writer pal died. He had managed to get one book published by winning a contest, but never deigned to self-publish. He was too proud to do that. Now, years of novels are stored somewhere but no one knows where.  His computer is password protected. No one knows the password. Decades of work are gone.

My self-published books are not making my rich but they are now in libraries where they can be read for decades. And we are earning a bit. At the beginning of November, I will receive a cut from the Black Coffee
Fiction e-books and paperbacks and a royalty of $12.40 from my novel. I sell a book here and there as well.

So I will self-publish, and the book should be available by mid-November.

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As of this evening, this blog has had 40,000 "hits" from all around the world.

I keep wondering who all these people are.


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