Update: After several months of going back and forth with rewrites and such, Steve Laube has chosen to decline representation for The Autographs. Sigh. It’s not a big, big deal. Disappointing, sure, but I’m a big kid. I can deal.
The good news is that I now have a much stronger manuscript for the experience, and I plan to submit to a couple of smaller publishing houses in the next couple of weeks to see if I can’t get anything started there.
The Spirit of Resistance (formerly called The Spark) is awaiting notice from Kelly Mortimer, who, according to her blog post of June 23, is caught up to the end of February on her submissions. This means I might not hear anything before September. Not that I’m in a great hurry, or anything. I once PM’d Michael Snyder and made the comment that the pace of publishing was glacial. He readily agreed. It certainly feels that way, and I guess that’s just a frustration I’ll have to get used to.
I’m still working on Patriots and Tyrants, and I’m tinkering with several others – waiting for something to reach out and grab me. The books at issue are Rock of Ages – an apocalyptic thriller about an attempt to blow up the Al Aqsa Mosque in order to rebuild the Jewish Temple; Waterless Places – a faerie story in the tradition of Raymond Feist’s Faerie Tale, and an untitled alien abduction story with tie-in’s to the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
BTW, if anyone wants a creepy read, you should check out the Book of Enoch. Even if we accept a second century B.C. date for the book, it still predicts a judgment upon the hybrid children of angels and humans (Genesis 5) coming in the seventieth generation from Enoch (which happens to be Jesus). Just creepy. There’s more, of course, but I don’t want to give away all the juicy tidbits which might find their way into the story line.
Anyway, four novels at once is too much for anyone to keep in their head. The ironic thing is that I have the most written on The Seven Sleepers, but I find that my characters still need a lot of development, and there’s a ton more research to do if I want to do it justice, so it’s effectively on the back burner with the fire off. Of course, if I do manage to sell The Autographs, I’ll pull it out and get working on it right away. Nothing like an upcoming sequel to help the contract along.