It's been the sight I've been waiting for... the front cover. I received a front cover design, which was based on an idea I had given the publisher. At the same time, my brother-in-law who's an artist designed his own cover. I showed it to the publisher and they loved it as much as I did.
So the actual front cover will be a family affair! Pic of it should be posted on my website in the next week or two. It shows the brutality, shock and hope all in one image and the title work is fantastic too. There's a tagline for Full of Sin as well: Monsters aren't born - they're created.
What do you think? I hope it intrigues.
Next up - receiving the final edit. Can't wait. Release still November, so still on track!
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Sunday, 20 September 2009
I want to be an author...
Dear who ever you are (one of too many people I have to write to),
Thank you for sending us your novel for consideration. Unfortunately, it's not one for us. Don't be discouraged, however, because this is a very subjective business. We wish you luck with your search for representation, but we're certainly not going to spend another minute thinking about the work you've slaved over for years.
Yours sincerely,
Someone you'll never meet.
Recognise that? If you're a writer, or if you want to be a writer, I'm sure you do. I've pulled that letter, or one that resembles it, out of an envelope so many times that I've lost count. For about four years now, I've waited expectantly for an agent's response to the package I've sent in. The package? My novel, Full of Sin. It wasn't always called Full of Sin, but it is now.
Full of Sin was seen by what feels like thousands of agents. Yes, I know that's an exaggeration, but when you just want one person to read it, like it and say, "Hey, I'll represent you," every rejection feels like ten. So eighty rejections is probably more like it, but it could be more.
During the summer, while I was in Poland and it was actually sunny, I opened my email account and saw the subject box filled with the title Full of Sin - Submission. I don't know what I expected - I'd certainly been hopeful so many times before that I'd started to lose hope - but when I clicked and opened the message what I'd waited for finally stared me in the face. "We'd like to publish your book."
Amazing. I'd waited so long and the moment was finally here. My book - words I'd cared about, laughed at, gruelled over - was finally going to be printed by... a publisher!
Full of Sin started life as a story I wrote when I was about fifteen or sixteen and it was called Testimony of Fate. Then I left the story and returned to it about four years ago. I decided to rewrite it - lots of big words that, at fifteen, I thought worked well together but actually made little sense - and it ended up being called The Soul It Breaks. A strange title, I confess, and maybe one that doesn't actually make any sense, but I went with it.
When it was rewritten, I showed it to a few agents. The letter above soon (or slowly, depending on which agent it was sent to) came through my letter box. After a few months I met the author Sophie Hannah. What an amazing writer and a lovely person too. She kindly read what I had written and gave me feedback. To hear the words "I think it could well be publishable" after being rejected by agents reinvigorated me and I worked on making the changes she suggested.
Then postage session number two commenced. I posted sample chapters to all the big agencies in London. Someone must like it, I thought. Someone. Please. Just one person. Don't we all plead to ourselves in such situations?
Rejection, rejection, rejection. Then I met Jodi Picoult - another lovely person and a great writer. "I was rejected a hundred times," she told me. Yes! I thought. I've still got time!
Of course, I didn't know back then that one hundred times would be pretty much accurate with me as well.
Rejection, rejection, rejection.
"Everyone hates it," I told my girlfriend, opening an envelope that had come that day.
William Morris Agency, London. I'd sent my chapters to them nine months before. "Apologies for the delay," the letter said. "Please send the rest in."
Finally, someone liked it. It's the best feeling in the world. If you've been asked for a complete MS, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. You move from everyone hating your writing to one person seeing potential in the first thirty or so pages. No big feat, I see now, but back then it was a huge step - a leap actually.
So the wait began. Wait, wait, wait. More rejections in the meantime. And then the William Morris letter. "It's not ready yet. Make it more shocking. Make it darker."
Brilliant, I thought. I like dark. I like shocking. That's why I wrote it. But isn't it already quite dark and shocking? How the hell can I make it even darker?
Sex and violence, the only two things I could think of.
Ed Perkins worked at William Morris and was communicating with me. I sent him my redraft - it was so shocking and dark that it was sick. Not quite American-Psycho-sick but sick. Anyhow, Ed Perkins had left William Morris, so the one person who liked something about it, my only hope, was nothing more than a secret dot on a map of the UK. I heard nothing for months and got no response to any of the letters I wrote him (obviously because he didn't work there any more).
It was lovely Sophie Hannah who told me that Caroline Michel had moved from William Morris to PFD. "Maybe he went with her," she told me.
And he had. I phoned up and spoke to him. "It's so dark now that my girlfriend won't even speak to me," I told him. "Good," his answer.
But it still wasn't ready and Ed was leaving PFD. So I was left alone with my book, no clue, and no saviour.
Send it to more agents, I told myself, and I did. I sent it to EVERYONE. Only send to one agent at a time, all the advice says. But my thoughts went this way - and correct me if I'm wrong: If an agent takes three months to get back to me and I only send one submission at a time, in ten years I could only contact forty agencies. And in ten years I should really be on my tenth book! So to hell with it - I sent out about thirty packages and hoped for the best.
I'd been fortunate to work with several authors because of visits I'd arranged at the school I worked in (still do). They recommeded agents and I sent more packages off. The Soul It Breaks - new title and updated writing, more shocking and darker than ever, guaranteed to make you puke.
Puke would put it mildly. Rejection, rejection, rejection. One agent - I won't name him even though my typing fingers really want to spell his name out - was so insulted by it that I was told, "This book will never be published."
So I was lost - a book so dark that no one would touch it, sex and violence that insulted, but a story I believed in and a story that Sophie Hannah believed in. Edit - that's the answer. Too dark, so edit. Which is exactly what I did. I cut over thirty pages - the parts that even I was too embarrassed to read aloud.
The result? It appeared to be tighter, it appeared to have unexpected shock and surprise, it appeared to have more pace. Still dark and shocking, but more like a quick punch rather than a slow strangulation.
A new title as well: Full of Sin. I sent it to a few more agents and some publishers, including one called Wild Wolf Publishing - a company that specialises in dark fiction. A place that doesn't just look at how commercial writing can be; a place that actually looks at story, character and quality of writing. The three things that have always interested me when I've invested in a book.
I'm not Dan Brown, I know that. But looking at the reviews for The Lost Symbol, do I want to be? I'm not J.K. Rowling (can't say I like her for a number of reasons I could be convinced to write about at a later date), nor Philip Pullman, nor Ian Rankin. I'd like to be like Ian 'Macabre' McEwan when he first started out - Full of Sin is inspired by The Cement Garden.
Whatever I am, something was spotted in my work. The email offering to publish Full of Sin came from Wild Wolf and since that day it's been a rollercoaster ride.
If you want to write, then write. I did, I got disappointed so many times, and now I'm here, waiting to hold my own book in my hands.
Last night, I saw Julie and Julia - not a great film, especially if you're male and in your twenties - but Julie blogged. It got me thinking about blogging. Why not? I thought. So I'm here and I'm going to share the story of getting published and all that happens during the countdown to publication day. I hope you'll join me for that ride.
Full of Sin is going to be released in November. No confirmed date yet, but I'll put it here when I know it. Since signing the contract, I've seen the layout electronically and I've done a final edit of the book. Now it's with the editor and I'm waiting to see the cover design. Sophie Hannah has provided me with a cover quote and I've got another, a really lovely one, from Matt Hilton. Then the PR blitz starts.
So join me for this journey. Let me know what you think. Maybe you're a writer and you've recently gone on the same journey. Maybe you want to be a writer too and reading about this might inspire you to press on despite the infamous rejection letters. Whatever you reason, enjoy.
Thanks and best,
Karl
Thank you for sending us your novel for consideration. Unfortunately, it's not one for us. Don't be discouraged, however, because this is a very subjective business. We wish you luck with your search for representation, but we're certainly not going to spend another minute thinking about the work you've slaved over for years.
Yours sincerely,
Someone you'll never meet.
Recognise that? If you're a writer, or if you want to be a writer, I'm sure you do. I've pulled that letter, or one that resembles it, out of an envelope so many times that I've lost count. For about four years now, I've waited expectantly for an agent's response to the package I've sent in. The package? My novel, Full of Sin. It wasn't always called Full of Sin, but it is now.
Full of Sin was seen by what feels like thousands of agents. Yes, I know that's an exaggeration, but when you just want one person to read it, like it and say, "Hey, I'll represent you," every rejection feels like ten. So eighty rejections is probably more like it, but it could be more.
During the summer, while I was in Poland and it was actually sunny, I opened my email account and saw the subject box filled with the title Full of Sin - Submission. I don't know what I expected - I'd certainly been hopeful so many times before that I'd started to lose hope - but when I clicked and opened the message what I'd waited for finally stared me in the face. "We'd like to publish your book."
Amazing. I'd waited so long and the moment was finally here. My book - words I'd cared about, laughed at, gruelled over - was finally going to be printed by... a publisher!
Full of Sin started life as a story I wrote when I was about fifteen or sixteen and it was called Testimony of Fate. Then I left the story and returned to it about four years ago. I decided to rewrite it - lots of big words that, at fifteen, I thought worked well together but actually made little sense - and it ended up being called The Soul It Breaks. A strange title, I confess, and maybe one that doesn't actually make any sense, but I went with it.
When it was rewritten, I showed it to a few agents. The letter above soon (or slowly, depending on which agent it was sent to) came through my letter box. After a few months I met the author Sophie Hannah. What an amazing writer and a lovely person too. She kindly read what I had written and gave me feedback. To hear the words "I think it could well be publishable" after being rejected by agents reinvigorated me and I worked on making the changes she suggested.
Then postage session number two commenced. I posted sample chapters to all the big agencies in London. Someone must like it, I thought. Someone. Please. Just one person. Don't we all plead to ourselves in such situations?
Rejection, rejection, rejection. Then I met Jodi Picoult - another lovely person and a great writer. "I was rejected a hundred times," she told me. Yes! I thought. I've still got time!
Of course, I didn't know back then that one hundred times would be pretty much accurate with me as well.
Rejection, rejection, rejection.
"Everyone hates it," I told my girlfriend, opening an envelope that had come that day.
William Morris Agency, London. I'd sent my chapters to them nine months before. "Apologies for the delay," the letter said. "Please send the rest in."
Finally, someone liked it. It's the best feeling in the world. If you've been asked for a complete MS, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. You move from everyone hating your writing to one person seeing potential in the first thirty or so pages. No big feat, I see now, but back then it was a huge step - a leap actually.
So the wait began. Wait, wait, wait. More rejections in the meantime. And then the William Morris letter. "It's not ready yet. Make it more shocking. Make it darker."
Brilliant, I thought. I like dark. I like shocking. That's why I wrote it. But isn't it already quite dark and shocking? How the hell can I make it even darker?
Sex and violence, the only two things I could think of.
Ed Perkins worked at William Morris and was communicating with me. I sent him my redraft - it was so shocking and dark that it was sick. Not quite American-Psycho-sick but sick. Anyhow, Ed Perkins had left William Morris, so the one person who liked something about it, my only hope, was nothing more than a secret dot on a map of the UK. I heard nothing for months and got no response to any of the letters I wrote him (obviously because he didn't work there any more).
It was lovely Sophie Hannah who told me that Caroline Michel had moved from William Morris to PFD. "Maybe he went with her," she told me.
And he had. I phoned up and spoke to him. "It's so dark now that my girlfriend won't even speak to me," I told him. "Good," his answer.
But it still wasn't ready and Ed was leaving PFD. So I was left alone with my book, no clue, and no saviour.
Send it to more agents, I told myself, and I did. I sent it to EVERYONE. Only send to one agent at a time, all the advice says. But my thoughts went this way - and correct me if I'm wrong: If an agent takes three months to get back to me and I only send one submission at a time, in ten years I could only contact forty agencies. And in ten years I should really be on my tenth book! So to hell with it - I sent out about thirty packages and hoped for the best.
I'd been fortunate to work with several authors because of visits I'd arranged at the school I worked in (still do). They recommeded agents and I sent more packages off. The Soul It Breaks - new title and updated writing, more shocking and darker than ever, guaranteed to make you puke.
Puke would put it mildly. Rejection, rejection, rejection. One agent - I won't name him even though my typing fingers really want to spell his name out - was so insulted by it that I was told, "This book will never be published."
So I was lost - a book so dark that no one would touch it, sex and violence that insulted, but a story I believed in and a story that Sophie Hannah believed in. Edit - that's the answer. Too dark, so edit. Which is exactly what I did. I cut over thirty pages - the parts that even I was too embarrassed to read aloud.
The result? It appeared to be tighter, it appeared to have unexpected shock and surprise, it appeared to have more pace. Still dark and shocking, but more like a quick punch rather than a slow strangulation.
A new title as well: Full of Sin. I sent it to a few more agents and some publishers, including one called Wild Wolf Publishing - a company that specialises in dark fiction. A place that doesn't just look at how commercial writing can be; a place that actually looks at story, character and quality of writing. The three things that have always interested me when I've invested in a book.
I'm not Dan Brown, I know that. But looking at the reviews for The Lost Symbol, do I want to be? I'm not J.K. Rowling (can't say I like her for a number of reasons I could be convinced to write about at a later date), nor Philip Pullman, nor Ian Rankin. I'd like to be like Ian 'Macabre' McEwan when he first started out - Full of Sin is inspired by The Cement Garden.
Whatever I am, something was spotted in my work. The email offering to publish Full of Sin came from Wild Wolf and since that day it's been a rollercoaster ride.
If you want to write, then write. I did, I got disappointed so many times, and now I'm here, waiting to hold my own book in my hands.
Last night, I saw Julie and Julia - not a great film, especially if you're male and in your twenties - but Julie blogged. It got me thinking about blogging. Why not? I thought. So I'm here and I'm going to share the story of getting published and all that happens during the countdown to publication day. I hope you'll join me for that ride.
Full of Sin is going to be released in November. No confirmed date yet, but I'll put it here when I know it. Since signing the contract, I've seen the layout electronically and I've done a final edit of the book. Now it's with the editor and I'm waiting to see the cover design. Sophie Hannah has provided me with a cover quote and I've got another, a really lovely one, from Matt Hilton. Then the PR blitz starts.
So join me for this journey. Let me know what you think. Maybe you're a writer and you've recently gone on the same journey. Maybe you want to be a writer too and reading about this might inspire you to press on despite the infamous rejection letters. Whatever you reason, enjoy.
Thanks and best,
Karl
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