It Begins · 5:38am Sep 11th, 2016
ABagOVicodin has begun his audio reading of Water Pony! The quality is top notch. His reading breathes new life into the characters, and makes me as happy and sad as writing them did.
In other news… There’s so much stress, some of it the good kind. In brief, because that’s all I can manage:
- Two pony short stories are in the works, written but mostly unedited. Plenty of work to do on that front, I’m sure. That’s all tied up with another, much much bigger editing project:
- I’ve been working on a novel for a many years. Last month I finally got it into the hands of a professional editor. To put it mildly, the feedback was amazing in all possible ways. On the one hand I have over a thousand inline comments to address and some character voicing to spruce up. On the other hand… I’ll just quote part of the summary letter’s opening paragraph:
This is hands above the many manuscripts that I edit, and I honestly felt that I was just reading a book I’d picked off the shelf in so many instances.
There's a lot more praise in it, and plenty of very thoughtful and precise "areas to work on." So… plenty of editing work lies ahead, work on my longest, most ambitious project that's been redlined (and thoroughly enjoyed) by a pro. No pressure. No pressure at all.
The real pressure comes when I have to go about marketing the novel. 
About the novel - did you think about the publisher already?
One of writers here (Viking-ZX) actually already published three original novels and described a lot of thing he faced in his blog. I think this was one of the first posts on the topic. Also here is one regarding writer self-promotion.
Thought it might be interesting for you.
You might also reach him and ask for tips regarding marketing.
Great news on all three counts! I loved the Water Pony, so I'm looking forward to whatever that novel of yours is. And it's always great to get affirmation from an authority figure like that.
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Thanks!
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There's actually quite a few people here with books out, including AugieDog and Bookplayer. Thanks for pointing me to Viking though, I'll check his stuff out! My worry is less about not finding helpful resources (there's a ton of them), and more about breaking into an entirely new and unfamiliar game that's well outside of my comfort zone. At one point writing pony fan fiction was in same boat, so I'll try to remain hopeful