Back at the daily grind… which is a complete misnomer because I LOVE sitting in my brand new writing studio and typing away for hours, working on my third novel, Left On Blue. The only daily grind is my coffee. The problem, as my sage father recently pointed out when I said I was starting a new book, is that I haven’t sold my first two books yet. Well, loyal readers, here’s the true emotion behind an unpublished author’s daily life: frustrated determination.
But I have a plan. Write each day on the new book, send out three new queries every week for That Changes Everything. It will sell; I have every confidence about that. Turns out, for me at least, the hardest part of writing a 300-page book is the one-page query letter to describe it in a way that someone wants to see it NOW.
I had just decided that instead of calling my book Commercial Fiction in my query letters, which is nothing but generic, I would call it Romantic Suspense. It is suspenseful, and there’s definitely a love story involved in the plot. But in my research for Left On Blue, I came across another author’s web site who calls herself a Romantic Suspense Author. Well, judging her books by their covers, That Changes Everything is NOT a Romantic Suspense novel. Hers look like Romance novels. Mine is not that.
That Changes Everything is suspenseful, but not a mystery in a who-done-it sort of way. It has a heart-felt love story, but it’s not a romance. It is tragic, but not like a Russian novel. It’s a Twenty-first century drama, plain and simple. Think: Wall Street meets Love Story.
Ok, ok. This is my job. If I can write the book, I can write the query letter. No more whining. No more procrastinating.
I’m off to see the Wizard. You have a good day now.