Happy Two Year Anniversary!
Yes, two years have passed since the Nerdist contest in which all of you amazing, wonderful, generous people gave your support, both monetary and emotional, to help me and my book Curio Citizen.
So, I know you are all wondering, where is my book?
The answer is, yes, it is still on its way!
Writing the first draft of a book is the fast and easy part. The rigorous process of editing, revising, editing more, revising more, and then the steps of copy-editing and proofreading, cover design, printing, and marketing are all the difficult and time-consuming aspects of publishing a novel.
In my update last October, I let you all know that I completed my first big round of revisions after working with my editor, Matt Harry. I sent in my new manuscript at that time, and I’ve been waiting for feedback since then. Inkshares is a very small team with a tall order of books in production, so as anxious as I am to continue the process, and excited as many of you have expressed you are to read my book soon, I’m afraid a big part of this is a waiting game.
But, I have good news. The staff at Inkshares has informed me that my new round of feedback will be coming mid-July. Once that happens, I will send out another update with new information on how the process will be moving forward! I want to thank each and every one of you again for your generous support and patience. I deeply, deeply appreciate your kindness, and I will work hard to deliver you the best book I can.
In the meantime, I’d like to give you updates more often even if I’m in a waiting spell. Many of you contributed to Curio Citizen because of your enthusiasm not only for the book, but as an aid to help jump-start my career as an author. So in that regard, I would like to share a bit of what I’ve been doing for the past two years, and I’ll continue to fill you all in on future endeavors as time goes on!
Since the contest in June 2017, I have written 7 novels! 4 of them I consider practice drafts to better hone my craft as a writer and don’t plan on trying to get those published, at least not anytime soon. However, I do intend to try to get the most recent 3 of those novels published. I have been querying one of them to agents and publishers (another long waiting game for responses!). The other 2 are in the self-editing phase, and I am hoping to start querying them to agents and publishers this fall.
What is querying? It’s the first step to getting a book traditionally published. A query is a letter to pitch a book to an agent or publisher, sometimes accompanied by a partial manuscript. If the agent or publisher likes the query, then they might ask to read the full novel manuscript to decide if they want to become my agent to represent the book to publishers, or if a publishing company, to publish the book outright.
As you might imagine, querying is both exciting and terrifying to a writer! I’ve received a few rejections, but also a few requests for more material from various agents and publishers, so I’m developing a thick skin, while maintaining hope that a current interested party might want to publish my work! I write full time every day, so whether money is rolling in or not, I already consider writing as my career. I intend to work hard so I can be successful. And I have all of you to thank for getting me on the road to have my first novel, Curio Citizen, published. And hopefully, there will be many more published books penned by Katherine Forrister in the future!
For now, I leave you with my gratitude and best wishes for an amazing summer! Keep your ears open for my next update in July.
All the best,
Katherine
Hello all!
I hope you are having a wonderful summer. Mine has been eventful, to say the least!
I have brief news regarding Curio Citizen--my previous editor is no longer with the company, so my manuscript is now in the hands of a new editor, Sarah Nivala. I am excited to receive their feedback and will keep you all informed as the editing process goes on.
In other news, my family and I made a big change this summer. We moved halfway across the country! I am now a resident of Kansas City and loving it. After three weeks, I’m finally feeling settled, and I’ve managed to make time to write in spite of the busy move.
I’m now in the process of preparing a fresh novel manuscript for a Twitter pitch event in September. These pitch events invite authors to write a short description of their novel within Twitter’s 280-character limit (quite the challenge!). If an agent or publisher likes the pitch, they’ll click that little heart button in the tweet to request more material. I’ve had moderate success with these sorts of events in the past, so I’m hoping this one will bear fruit. Wish me luck! As always, thank you for your interest and support of my writerly aspirations!
Best,
Katherine