Touched Up Book 1 Cover

Book 1 needed a touch up to its cover art, so I did some work on it. I changed the green moon a bit, but the main change was adding the briar vines around Andy Brighton (I wanted it to look like he and Gratoly were on top of Marble Mountain & near the prickle-thorn trees). Check it out:

Last game of the year

Yesterday evening, on Feb. 29, 2012, UAB held its last home game for the men's basketball team at Bartow Arena. I graduated from UAB in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in computer science and frequently attend UAB sporting events like basketball/baseball/tennis etc. with friends like Rick Beason (who also graduated UAB & Samford). UAB won the game against a fiesty Tulsa team. UAB lead for most of the game, and only in the last few minutes did Tulsa finally gain a lead (going ahead 52 to 51 I think at the time with a couple minutes to go). From then on it was neck and neck with either team having their opportunities to win. Successful shots by UAB and misses by Tulsa sealed the outcome however, and UAB went on to a 68-64 victory. I love games like that-games where the outcome is not known until it ends because it is such a close fight. (I hate blowouts). UAB has one more game in their season before the conference tourney and needs a win for a good seeding/possible first round bye. Every team in the conference gets in so I'm told, so getting a bye would help greatly. The teams record this year is only like 14/14, which is not as good as in past years where they won at least 20 games and was "on the bubble" for getting into the NCAA tourney. This year their only chance at it would be to win the conference tourney, with such an average season. I took a photo with my camera phone of the dragon sculpture outside the arena before we entered. It's a cool looking dragon:

BLAZE THE DRAGON

on youtube.com is a video of the making of this sculture and the placing of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQu4vMN2Wgk





Twenty Submissions

Well, I've submitted my first book to 20 literary agencies so far. And so far 6 have already rejected it. Which leaves 14 possibly still looking the idea over. Some of the agencies I sent the first 50 pages, while others were also sent a synopsis or just a query letter of interest. Each agency has different stipulations on what to send them initially-so I tried to follow their guidelines. So for now I'm waiting to hear back from at least one that seems interested and wants me to send them my full manuscript.

Rewrite Complete

  I am totally finished with my rewrite of book one. It took me about a week or so. So now I have a completed manuscript saved in Word doc format, double spaced and ready to go when an agent asks for me to submit it. Spell check and all. I still need to submit query letters of interest to more agents, and I'll start doing that in the next few days. So far I've only submitted anything to one agent, and the chances are good that one submission will be only the first of many. But who knows? Maybe I'll be the luckiest guy on the planet. (ha ha)
I just hope that whatever happens, it will be accepted by someone within a few months. Cross your fingers I guess.

Made my first submission

  I've begun submitting my first novel to literary agents. The first to receive it is John Rudolph at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. His interest in middle grade fiction piqued my interest as well, and so I thought he would be a good candidate for it. To him I sent, by email, a query cover letter, along with attachments of a synopsis of my book and a sample chapter (the prologue). We'll see what becomes of this in the following weeks. I'm now working on converting the book over from what I wrote it in (single spaced, OpenOffice) and into what the agents prefer to accept (double spaced, MS Word format). It's not difficult to do so, just time consuming.

Remaking my first book

   So, I've decided to pull my book Wyrmewood and the Forsaken Orb out of publication and make a few changes to it in order to make it ready for submission to literary agents. The changes include; moving the original prologue into chapter 2, making a new prologue from chapter 3 of Tymespell (from the chapter Carpaggio Sole), re-editing the entire book, and also even renaming the book itself.
   The new name is: Andy Brighton and the Dragons of Wyrme, book one, The Forsaken Orb. Book two will be probably named: Andy Brighton and the Dragons of Wyrme, book two, Magic & Dragons. I am almost half-way through the second book now, but want to get the process of finding an agent out of the way first before proceeding further with it. I haven't come up with a title for book three as yet.
   I've designed a new cover for the first book, and you can see the difference between them here:

                                 Original book                      New design

    We'll see what happens. I know that the submission process will take a while and it may be very frustrating. All I can do is try though and I know that even the best books in the world sometimes get rejected many times before finally being accepted. (J K Rowling's Harry Potter was rejected many times, but it turned out okay in the end).

Happy New Years (A couple days late)

2012 is finally here. And who knows what it'll bring? Let's hope only good things!
I captured the Bing! homepage image of the day to ring in the new year...