Make Me An Offer!

And Making Progress...

We got an offer on my latest book, The Black Light Club.

Obviously, I can’t say much yet and there’s always a chance it could all fall through, but as a practical matter, looks like I’ll have my seventh novel out late next year.

Seven!

I’ve had a preliminary call with the possible publisher, and have been impressed with their vision of the book. While proposed edits will be more substantial than others I’ve undertaken on previous novels, I understand the reasoning behind them. I always look at it like this—I told the story I intended to tell, but if there’s a better way to tell it, I’m open to that. I’ve never been one to suggest that my version is the only possible one, just the version I chose at the time. It’s easy to get too precious about “your story,” but you also risk that story, or any version of it, ever seeing the light of day. I love the characters I wrote about in this book, love the world I created for them, and I’d like to share them. So, I’m willing to re-craft parts of it, to make that happen.

That’s where business meets art, and it’s the nature of being a creative professional.

Anyway, we’ll see where it all goes from here. But even after six (now seven books) it never gets old to hear that someone wants to publish something you’ve written.

Back in July, I wrote my “Accountability” post, where I detailed how I grid and track my projects. I thought it was worth revisiting to see how I’ve been doing!

The italicized sections are what I wrote in the previous post; current status immediately follows

• Just after I got back from New York in June, I turned in my latest novel to my agent and publisher. Tentatively titled The Black Light Club, I’m waiting now to hear if anyone liked it. Now we know the answer, we got an offer!

• I also recently adapted and completed a spec pilot of The Black Light Club. I’m not sure what (if anything) I’ll do with it, but I wanted to go through the adaptation process and have a recent script exemplar on hand. Really solid draft still in hand, so when my dramatic rights agent starts pitching BLC for options, it’ll be packaged as well.

• This week just turned over to my agent the latest draft of a novel currently called 13 Days. It’s been a long road with that story; I’ve been working at a version of it off and on since 2018. It clearly doesn’t fit “genre-wise” with my latest novels, but I like it, probably too much, and maybe there’s a home for it somewhere. This is a novel I probably wouldn’t have had the chance revisit again if I wasn’t retired from DEA, and I’ve enjoyed taking another crack at it. My agent read it, made her notes, and now I’m looking to trim it a bit. She definitely thinks we can sell it, I just need to cut it down (it’s about 125k words right now). We’ve talked about shopping this after the first of the year, to give me time to make those cuts. I’m actually considering working with a freelance editor to help me pare this down, since I’ve “lived inside” this book for so long, I’m not sure I can see the forest for the trees anymore. I know what needs to be done, and mostly where the cuts should come from, it’s just they’re painful, and I may need someone to help me make the hard choices. I’ve never used a freelance editor in my life, but I might. More to follow.

• I’m in the final throes of a first draft feature film screenplay I’m co-writing, based on an original story idea of mine. We’ll probably get this cleaned up in another month or so. It’s a high octane crime thriller (think Training Day), purposefully written with a reasonable budget in mind to make it attractive and actually producible in the current film environment. This script is done and in the appropriate hands, and those hands aren’t mine. Might have to address some subsequent notes, but early feedback is really promising. This is truly moving into the “development” phase.

• I’m mid-way through a horror short story I’m planning to finish by the end of July. I have no idea what, if anything, I’ll do with it. I might even convert it to screenplay down the line. I generally don’t write shorts but this one hooked me and I’ve enjoyed tinkering around with it, and I’m far enough down the rabbit hole with it I don’t want to set it aside. Here’s the elevator pitch: When her dying daughter discovers a mysterious green glass bottle washed up on a Texas beach, a young mother must battle the dark and alluring forces it unleashes, threatening their lives and sanity… This short is done, but it’s hardly short. Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novella. I shared it with some folks and got lots of positive response, but it lives in a space where there’s not much to do with it at the moment, and no foreseeable market. I’m going to let this sit for a few more months and then decide if I want to revisit it. Otherwise, I’m thrilled just to have gotten it down and out of my head.

• I’m about to start work on a solo high-concept spec feature film screenplay; a cool idea, a great log line, I want to write it and see where it goes. I’m looking to have a solid draft in place by October. Draft is done, and I’m just going through a revision pass of it now. On track and on target!

• I have another high-concept spec feature film screenplay I’ve been doing some noodling on, but it’ll be expensive and in a genre I don’t normally write. Great log line too, but I’m going to put this on the back burner for the moment. This is where business meets art and for now, trumps it—there’s only so many hours in a day, and while I think this is a cool idea, the other screenplay is probably a better fit for what I’m doing at the moment. I’ll return to this next year. Status quo. Still next year’s project.

• Finally, I’ll start working on my next novel, tentatively titled Black Horses, in August (although sharp-eyed readers will note in the picture above I’d penciled in next week!). Because I want to get that short story done and at least start down the path on the spec screenplay, I’ve pushed this back a few weeks. Books are such heavy lifts for me, and I’ve been doing so much writing the last 90 days, that I am comfortable letting this stall for a bit. When I was working full-time as a federal agent, it would basically take me ten full months to get a novel wrapped up, but with my new schedule, I’m going to angle for this one to be done by February 2025. Well underway on this, although with a revised target date now of March 2025. That being said, the revisions I might have to do on BLC could easily move this back, and likely will.

Although I didn’t address it in my July post, I’ve also got a few other things brewing—a shopping agreement on a prior book of mine, the TV series pilot I was in Los Angeles working on (that we’re now just waiting for our greenlight), and an untitled fantasy novel (UFN) that I’ve actually written a couple of chapters of, just to kind of see where it might take me. These things are on my grid as well now, all reflecting the multiple projects I’m trying to wrangle.

That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll dive into this questions freelance editing.

As always, feel free to—