The Gaven

I spent the day writing two query letters.  That’s right.  Two.  I absolutely hate writing these things.  They are difficult for me to do and I would rather do anything else than write them.  As a matter of fact I did.  My day went a little bit like this:

Sit at computer and open up Open Office.  Stare at the blank screen.  Open Firefox, go to reddit, see if there’s any new news.  Write three blog posts for Loss of Privacy.  Switch back to Open Office.  Stare at the screen some more.  Read, re-read, and read again, the literary agencies’ websites.  Make sure that they would be a good fit for you.  Try to figure out how to fit in that the owner of the agency and myself are Mets fans.  Decide that’s not appropriate for a query letter.  Switch back to Open Office and write my return address and the address of the agency.  Take a two hour nap.  Play with the cat.  Eat lunch.  Finally, write the query letter.  Check, double check, and triple check for spelling mistakes.  I’m sure I still missed one.  Print up query letter and synopsis.  Start to feel sick (This is normal and happens every time I print a query letter).  Drive to the post office (we no longer have mailboxes we can drop them in) and mail the letter.  Feel a little more sick.  Wait for “thanks but no thanks” rejection letter.

The reason I hate these so much is because there has to be a balance between suck-up, parting information, and selling your book to people who have never heard of you before.  The whole process feels, to me, to be a bit of a crap shoot.  So, the negativity seeps in and I’m always sure that the rejections will come.  However, it always helps when I get an email from some other stranger telling me they liked reading my book.  I love bittorrent.

Let me write at random or give me a topic and I’ll write until the cows come home.  Make me write a professional letter and I’d rather stab my eyes out.  But, it has to be done.  Wish me luck and let’s hope I didn’t make any typos.

A friend recently recommended is my website online to me and I thought I’d give it a go. So far, I’m liking it because I can get notifications immediately if something goes wrong and sort the problem out ASAP. If you have a bunch of websites, like I do, or servers it’s also handy because I don’t have to constantly run from site to site to make sure everything is working properly.

Is my website online supports ping, website, HTTP(s), DNS, SMTP, POP3, SQL, and more stuff I don’t even use. So, yeah, this is a bit of a shameless plug, but I thought I’d pass along some helpful info to my readers.

I really wanted a way for other people to keep up with what’s happening with the novel, as well as myself, and, since I don’t update things here often enough, I’ve gone and taken the plunge at Twitter.  I’ve been trying to keep this place as professional as possible, but some people still want to follow what I’m doing from day to day.  I figured Twitter is the best place to do this.

I’ve also had a facebook account for nearly two years, but I rarely log into it because I really don’t like the layout and a lot of the crap that goes on there.  So far, it’s pretty easy to use and allows me to be more relaxed than maintaining this site.

You can find my Twitter account here and the rss feed here.

You can now purchase a copy of The Gaven through Lulu.com. Although I have had mostly positive responses from the people who have read the novel via bittorrent, I have yet to receive even an inkling of interest from any literary agents. So, I am now offering an ebook and a paperback through Lulu.com.  I will also continue in my search for an agent and post any updates on the site.

Naturally, if I do get published the traditional way, this option may no longer be available, but for now, I’m selling The Gaven on my own.

I’m still busy plugging away on other things, which keep me busy this time of year.  I also think that I’ve exhausted my resources in trying to find an agent in the United States.  I’ve looked overseas, but, by and large, they also want someone who is native to that particular country.

As it stands now, I am at a crossroads as to how to get anyone to seriously look at my work.  I am, most likely, going to take a few days off and try to find a new angle in my approach.  Sometimes, you just have to walk away from the frustration for a while before you dig your heels in for another round.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately.  I’ve been finishing a lot of work at my job and then went on vacation for 15 days.  It was nice to get away, but, now, it’s time to get back to the grinding job of sending out more queries to more agents who will send me even more rejection letters.

I think I’m going to tweak the query letters a little bit.  Maybe I’m just not wording things correctly.  Wish me luck.

I’m not so good with doing screen captures, however, there have been, approximately, 50 people who have downloaded The Gaven in the last 10 days.  These are the people that connected directly to me.  I don’t have stats for those that connected to another peer and did not get the file from me.

Some time ago, I made a comment on reddit about my book.  Some people have downloaded the book and commented on it.  I also got a donation!

Here is one comment that I received:

I’m only on page 33, but I like what I’m reading so far. I really do.

Good pacing, and a great sense of stifling, suffocating hopelessness. For a first novel, it’s a great read.

Keep submitting it! It’s good stuff. Keep all your rejection letters so you can laugh at those people later when you’re a best-selling author.

And this comment is from the donation that I received:

Thanks, the book was really good (I couldn’t stop reading it once I started). I’m glad I found your book on reddit. AndrewB, The Netherlands

I have to say, I’m a bit overwhelmed that people like the novel and found it compelling enough to keep reading it.  I’m even more surprised to find that people actually donate to me.  It gives me hope that it will, one day, get published.

I have finally made a torrent of The Gaven so that I can share it and give the novel a greater chance of being read by more people.  It’s available at h33t and Demonoid at the moment.  The Pirate Bay is having problems with their captcha at the moment, so I can’t upload it right now.  Once it’s fixed, I’ll put in a link where to find it.

Any comments that I receive I will gather together and make a post here.

I have been neglecting this website for quite some time.  Since I last posted, I have had to move to another server.  My friend, who still generously hosts the site for me, moved for business reasons and the move was quite a disaster.  The site was up and down, sometimes 15-20 times in a single minute.  It took a month to get sorted.  We both felt like packing it in, but, after thoroughly beating two network cards, all seems well.

I’ve also been working far to much at my job that pays my bills, trying to keep a social life, and working on my blog, which I split into two different blogs a couple of months ago to better reflect the needs of each.  So, there is now the main blog, Loss of Privacy, and the blog I have a little fun with, Rantings of a New Yorker.

With all this going on, I’ve not done much here as there isn’t much to tell.  I’m still sending out query letters that come back rejected.  I’m afraid I won’t be able to much else other than query letters until the school year ends in May.  The good news is that, when school is out, I can concentrate more on the possibility of another revision and sorting out other ways of garnering attention for The Gaven.  The bad news is that the school district doesn’t pay me over the summer, which is stupid and a whole other story for another time.

In the mean time, feel free to read and criticize The Gaven.  I welcome the feedback and constructive criticism.  It will help The Gaven to be a better novel and me a better writer.