Late last week I was informed that A Sea Sought in Song had been selected from out of a well-known publisher’s infamously vast slush pile “for closer examination.” This was a pleasant surprise, as it’d been eleven months since I’d deposited my manuscript in that particular quagmire. Who knows if it’ll make the next cut, or how long that might take, but I consider this a big achievement in any event.
Since I always try to pair my news reports with authorial insights, I’ll observe, in a spirit of undaunted uncertainty, that Book Three continues to progress elliptically. I’ll write a scene, think through its ramifications, then go back and rewrite one or two past scenes before circling back around to the front lines. I’m calling due a lot of the open-ended place-markers with which I’ve strewn my path, connecting heretofore-unseen dots, complexifying the narrative matrix. It’s slow going, but quite rewarding. A certain knowledge of future events has proven unnecessary to weave a tightly-plotted tale.
Kinda like in real life.
Arlam Online 