Hello, dreamers. August has come at last. The good news (for me, anyway), is that summer is nearly over. And that means the long drought in the literary world is coming to an end. I’m seeing more and more posts on Twitter about writers drafting, prepping for querying. The writing world is coming alive again. Springtime for parchment and quill.

The bad news is, before I can get to the fall submission season, I’ll have to pass through August, which is arguably the worst time for writers to query novels or submit short stories. However, that also means I have an entire month to do a lot of things I’ve been meaning to do for some time.

In the past, I’ve often made the mistake of rushing into submissions and queries. Looking back, honestly I just wanted to get it over with; hit “send” before I lose my nerve. But that’s in the past. Now I know what I have, and what I can do. The anxiety has been replaced with anticipation. And while I’m itching to start shopping around all the awesome stuff I’ve written over the past four months, I know it’ll be worth the wait. That said, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

Short Fiction

As has been my routine over the past month, last Sunday I began work on another short story, The Virtruvian Men. Through late June and the course of July, I fell into a rhythm: I’d finish a short story on Saturday night, comb through my outstanding projects on Sunday night, and start working on a new story.

Well, last week I finished The Vitruvian Men on Wednesday night.

It was not entirely unexpected; I’d known this one would be shorter than my usual fare (I think of it as being a more “marketable” length). But after knocking out six stories in five weeks, I did something I haven’t done much this year: I gave myself a breather. Instead of diving right into another story, I started an editing pass on all my completed stories thus far, including my manuscripts. I also took a closer look at my platform (more on that in a moment). In other words, I did things I’d been putting off for a long time.

I’d originally expected editing my existing short fiction works to take the better part of several weeks. But I knocked out almost all of them over the course of four days (I’m saving The Vitruvian Men until tonight, as I wanted more distance from the piece). In the past, I’d have taken that pace as a clear sign I wasn’t really doing enough. But I found myself making some substantial changes to several of these pieces. So, I dunno…maybe I’m finally getting a hang of this whole editing thing.

At any rate, more than likely the editing pass I’d expected to carry on through mid-August will be finished tonight. I’ll admit I find that somewhat…annoying. I’d figured being knee-deep in editing would keep me from chomping at the bit, desperately wanting to pull the trigger and start submitting stories before September. But I think I’ll have more than enough to keep me busy.

As I’ve looked ahead to the coming months, I’ve begun to again adjust my priorities and schedule. One consequence of this is I may continue to work on short fiction, though perhaps at a more leisurely pace. Of course, knowing me, we’ll see how long that lasts. I already have two existing projects I’m eyeing for this week.

Querying The Ursa Frontier

As my regular readers will know, I set all of two goals for myself regarding my novel in July: rework the opening paragraphs, and come up with a new title. The week before last I managed to find a new hook I feel really good about. And just before the calendar flipped to August, I knocked off the second goal. Which means this section of the post needs a new title. One moment…

Querying Seven Days on Samarkand

There. That’s better. After reworking the story over the course of late spring and early summer, I realized the resultant novel revolved almost entirely around Rand, Nina, and Ford’s survey mission to the surface of Megrez 9, otherwise known as Samarkand. So I finally came up with a title I actually feel good about.

Now, as for the coming month, I mentioned above I’ve again reshuffled my priorities for August. Though I don’t think it’s a great idea to start querying immediately, I’ve already begun seeing posts on Twitter from literary agents reopening after summer vacations. That means that, while I’ll still want to wait until early September to start subbing short fic again, querying before the end of August should go well.

As such, I’m going to devote the first several weeks of August to working on my query materials. It will start this week with a revision pass through the manuscript. I doubt I’ll make any substantive changes (I can hear my regular readers rolling their eyes), but I believe it will be easier to work on query materials with the story fresh in my mind. Especially after the dramatic changes I made the last time I worked on it.

From there, by now readers know the drill: I’ll begin by writing my synopsis, then a query letter, then finally checking up on agents and seeing just what each of them will want from me. My new goal is to begin querying on August 25. That’s only three weeks away, but I’m feeling ambitious.

Website and Platform

Hawkeyed readers will have noticed some initial changes to my website. I’ve begun by streamlining my homepage, optimizing it for mobile viewing. Over the coming week, I’ll be revamping my “Books” page, which will be retitled “Latest Works”. The new page will include blurbs and updates for all my existing longer works, including works-in-progress. This will allow readers to know more about what I’m working on and how things are progressing.

I’ve also begun work on adding Substack to my platform. I’ve been reading through it over the past week, getting a feel for the kind of content readers there enjoy. If you’re reading this and you’re on Substack, by all means drop a comment and let me know what you’d like to see from me on that platform. I’m currently planning to formally launch my Substack a week from today, so keep an eye out for further updates.

Aquarius 1

So my current work-in-progress has slipped down the list this week. But that’s simply a matter of timetables: I will almost certainly be querying before I begin principal writing on a new novel.

By no means does that suggest I’ll be abandoning the story, but at least for the next week or two work will probably be back-burnered. It’s just as well; I’ve largely completed my research for the moon’s biosphere. Over the coming month I’ll be slowly ramping things up, starting with biosphere worldbuilding. Then I’ll be digging into the existing passages, completing several important changes I need to make. With any luck, I’ll be ready to go once my first queries for Seven Days on Samarkand are away.

New Content

This week in my “WIP Wednesday” post, I’ll be filling readers in on what I know so far about the biosphere of the ocean exomoon in Aquarius 1. On Friday I’ll be releasing my next literary “Sci-Fi Reviewed”, where I’ll be taking a look at All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I’ll be closing the week out on Sunday with a new weekly feature, which will replace my ongoing “Dear Sir or Madam” post series for the time being. Until then, dare to dream. – MK