I finished it! I finished the second draft of Phlox Fall!
This pronouncement comes quite delayed, as it was actually completed a month ago, but for reasons ranging from the craziness of life to my laziness on weekends (and a looooooooong love affair with Horizon: Zero Dawn), I haven’t really been back to write about it until now. It took quite a bit longer than I intended due to a plot alteration I made in the second half of the book that required many scenes to be rewritten from scratch. And even those that didn’t need to be complete rewritten required edits–sometimes substantial edits–to make them cohesive with the rest of the book.
Now it’s on to the first readers. Phlox is the current selection for the Graham family book club (members including my parents, siblings, and their spouses), and we’ll be holding our discussion on it in September. I’m excited to hear what they say, as they’ll be coming at it having not read the first draft; only my wife holds that honor. Some of them will be starting without even a basic detail of the plot, so it’ll be especially exciting to hear their takes having no fore-knowledge of what they were getting into.
So, what does that mean for me?
One, it means it’s time for me to move on to something else. I’ve already started putting together character profiles and doing preliminary research for the next writing project, though how long before I start putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, rather) is up in the air.
Two, it means I need to start really considering what I want for the future of Phlox. The practical thing would be to send it through a couple more revisions and start trying to sell it, but the question remains how that would be best done. There’s the traditional route, which I have explored previously when trying to sell my novel Sunshine INC, but I’m also becoming much more interested in self-publishing. Whether I feel ready to dedicate myself to the hard work that would be necessary for that avenue is something I’m still exploring, but I think as time goes on, I will be more open to it. There are still a couple mental hurdles I have to clear, though. One, I need to become comfortable with the notion of spending a decent chunk of change on editors, covers, and the like. Two, I need to be ready to put myself out there and do my own marketing. This will probably be the part I struggle with the most, since in a lot of ways it’ll require as much work, if not more, than the actual writing of my stories, and will in some ways be like a second job. But then, writing should already be treated like a second job, and in many ways I’ve been neglecting that very pertinent aspect of this whole endeavor.
So that’s where I stand now, and where my thoughts and concerns lie for the next few months of my writing adventure. I’ll have more to say soon.
Bradley C. Graham 