The View from the Nook

Scrub up for surgery!

The Demons Within is in the submissions stage which, to a new writer, seems to be a long, labourious process. A process for someone with some patience. So far I have sent about a dozen but it can take up to six months for agents to come back to you.

But over the weekend I had some feedback and a heads up regarding the trend for Fantasy novels. Fantasy has always been a genre where the word count doesn’t seem to matter, even for a new author. After all, the world needs to be created and described to the reader, things like the social structure, trade, geography and climate, and religion et al. All things that we tend to take for granted with a romance, crime or thriller set in a contemporary or even period piece. The original final draft (well, pre-submission final draft) for The Demons Within weighed in at a hefty 159,000 words.

The new trend for Fantasy seems to bring it in line with other genres where agents and publishers would prefer shorter, more standard length novels, especially those from newbie authors. Obviously, when you are JK, or GRRM or Stephen King you can submit what you want! Could this new trend be connected to the surge in popularity of TV streaming, where episodes are a short and snappy, standard(ish) length and consumers are happy to binge watch. After all, books sell for similar prices irrespective of length and we can ‘binge’ by buying the set of books in the inevitable trilogy or quadrilogy.

So, I have had to scrub up for some emergency surgery but luckily there was a natural break point near halfway so the dissection has been fairly neat. Just a couple of chapters swapped about and an epilogue and prologue added to the two halves to neaten the wound up.

Now, the old adage ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ is ringing in my ears alongside the Monty Python song ‘Always look on the Bright Side of Life’. Last week, I had completed one book, this week, I have completed two!

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