The Jilted League aka The Bimbo, The Bitch, and The Brain aka Olympia, Dina, and Val.  Click to enbiggen! Words and Art by Kelly Thompson.  Colors by Adam Greene.  Thanks Adam!

Well, so much for that.  I sent the ladies to deliver a message and as usual it’s lost in a sea of bitching and moaning.  I hope they’re better superheroes than messengers…time will tell.

So here’s what’s going on with my novel, for those of you who have been asking (you precious but devoted few!).  As some of you already know, I got an offer from an incredibly talented and powerful agent to work exclusively on the revisions to my novel with him.  This essentially means we have both put in considerable time and effort on my book and are both hoping to work together, but we have not signed a contract.  So officially, I’m working exclusively on revisions to my novel with this agent, but technically I do not yet have an agent.  But don’t worry, this is not so uncommon as it sounds.

Anyway, sometime last June the agent and I came to this exclusivity arrangement at which point I began the painful process of waiting for his revision notes.  They arrived in early August and I got to work quickly after they arrived.  The notes were excellent – but much larger in scope than I had expected.  I (finally) finished the revisions (which included cutting about 60 existing pages and adding 130 new pages) at the end of October.  Upon finishing the revision I sent the notes back to the agent to get his feedback, at the same time I sent the revised manuscript to my writing group for a critique.

I have not yet heard back from the agent, though I hope to soon, but Wednesday night I got a very in depth crit from my writing group on the new draft.  Now, I must tell you, it’s pretty scary to wait for a crit like that.  You’ve been pounding away on your keyboard all alone in a room writing 130 new pages that could be brilliant or could be the worst dreck you’ve ever written, and while it seems like it should be obvious which it is, I have to admit that I am wildly inconsistent in how I feel about my work.  I can write an amazing scene before lunch, pat myself on the back as if I’m a genius, go make a sandwich, come back in half an hour, look at the same scene and proclaim myself King of Hacks…the hackiest hacky hack to ever live.  It’s quite a sight.  So suffice to say, I really had no barometer about how those new 130 pages were working.  Some days I felt pretty good about them, some days…not so much.  And since not a single soul in all the world had read them yet…I was pretty anxious to hear what the group thought.

Overall, they really liked the new draft and the change in plot and arc (130 new pages – that’s definitely some changes).  There were problems of course (there always are) and I haven’t yet had a chance to go through all four manuscripts to see their individual page to page notes (which can sometimes be a blow to the ego), but the response was overwhelmingly good…much better than I had expected.  So I’m really happy today.  And really grateful to have such a wonderful group of writers that are supportive and critical.  Joining a writing group was hands down the best thing I’ve ever done for my writing.

So what does all this mean?  It means that I’m not crazy (yay!) and that hopefully the agent I’m working with will feel similarly about the manuscript as my writing group did.  I have no doubt that more revisions will still be needed (not to mention a strong edit – the ms is coming in at a bloated 419 pages right now) but hopefully the agent will be on board for the new direction…and sometime…sometime!…in the relatively near future we can sign a contract and get this book out on submission to publishers. So everyone, please continue to keep your fingers crossed – I know it’s already been about six months – but if you can hang on for three or four more I’d really appreciate it – and hopefully this thing will really get to go somewhere…and if I’m lucky…take me with it.

Thanks for all of your support…and know that by “support” I mean agreeing to buy at least 500 copies of the book each when it finally (hopefully!) sees publication. 

*Oh – and click here if you want to know “what happened LAST time” according to Dina in panel two.