I'm no longer blogging, I'm platforming (and other tidbits on where I've been)

Nearly 11 months ago, I restarted this here blog -- it had been somewhere around 8 or 9 years prior to that when I had last blogged.

At the time, in 2023, I wrote a bit about getting back to some old dreams and hopes – you know, the kind that get pushed to the back burner as life takes center stage, then get pushed off the stove top completely, then maybe get pushed into that funny little drawer under the stove never to be seen again, as one gets further into a career, raising kids, taking care of all the stuff that comes along.

My dream, my hope, of course, was to do far more during my life with writing. For those of you who know me, you know I have spent most of my adult life as a writer. Most of that time I've been a newspaper reporter and editor, interspersed among a few dalliances with the business side of the industry as a general manager and publisher. I've sold a number of freelance articles over the years, and have more than a handful of short story publications in the horror field to my name.

Most might say I've done okay, in terms of making a living in some form as a writer. I recall way back in my younger days when my dream was to be a fulltime writing, penning fiction and freelance articles. To me, for a writer, that was it -- there was no higher achievement or way of life. Then I came across a stringer who covered county government news for her local weekly, getting perhaps two or three articles a week for low pay. Her real job was writing novels -- she was regularly publishing two science fiction novels a year, through one of the major publishing houses, yet she needed the stringer work to have anything above absolute basic bills paid. She once told me that I, as a full-time reporter, had the dream job every writer wanted.

I never fully bought into that, but there is something to be said for a regular, albeit relatively small, paycheck, health insurance, and a handful of other benefits, all things full-time freelancers rarely see. With a family, those are all must-haves, so the novels and short stories eventually get put away and forgotten.

In those handful of blogs I published last summer, I told you all I had seen a few things recently, experienced a few events that got me to thinking that if I'm ever going to chase those old dreams, there's nothing like the present.

 And then I disappeared from the blogging world.

But I didn't just fade away. I have been writing. And writing. A lot of that has been for my full-time job as a daily newspaper editor, but I've managed to eek out a few words of fiction now and again.

I've penned a handful of short stories, sending two out to publishers. One was rejected, but the other was accepted for the anthology WRITER'S RETREAT: TALES OF WRITING AND MADNESS. I have a few others I hope to send out soon.

What I'm really excited about is my other writing. I now have a full-length adult novel completed, along with first drafts of two children's novels. Full disclaimer here -- the novel is actually a novella I wrote years ago, but over the past year I rewrote and revised, built that from about 35,000 words to 75,000 words. It's best categorized as a romantic supernatural thriller, with a few murders, some mystical evil and a bit of light humor. The two protagonists are a high-profile police detective and a reporter, each relentless in their pursuit of what is behind the murders, while finding themselves drawn toward one another despite their best efforts otherwise.

I've written, revised, edited, and rewritten that thing, and I'm ready to start querying literary agents, to see if I can get any bites on that. From everything I've read and listened to on podcasts, landing an agent is nearly impossible. Most of the ones who are accepting queries get anywhere from 20 to 100 queries a day, and many of them might take on four or five new clients a year. Not great odds.

But, as I told a writer the other day, you will never land an agent if you don't send those queries out. At present, I've more or less finished the query letter -- an arduous task in itself, trying to tell what my novel is about in less than 300 words -- and now I'm slogging through the evil synopsis. Once that's done, I will begin submitting those queries. I've set a goal to start that within two weeks -- by June 16.

After that, I plan to spend the following 10 to 12 weeks on the children's novels. To be more precise, they are aimed at the lower middle grade market, meaning I'm shooting for kids in the age 9 to 10 range. Both works are spooky children's horror novels. I've got the complete bones of the stories -- one clocks in at 18,000 words, while the other is around 21,000. I need to rewrite, revise, and build them out to the range of 30,000 to 35,000.

Hopefully, I can have them both written, polished, and be sending them out to prospective agents by the end of the summer.

Then, I'll be turning my attention to a straight-up adult horror novel I've already more or less outlined. Actually, it's from a short story I wrote years ago called The Dark Secret of Warren House, which was published in the Canadian magazine Dark Recesses. That story was about 3,000 words, but I'm hoping to build it into a 75,000 to 80,000 word novel.

And, I'll be blogging. Really I will.

Seems agents, and most book publishers, like the idea of their writers engaging with the public via social media. I guess that's no surprise. For non-fiction, it's a must -- you have 20 million engaged followers, you're getting a book deal. No followers? Crickets.

It's not quite the same in the world of fiction. A large following -- any following -- is a nice bonus, but it's ultimately the story which has to sell. But the following doesn't hurt. I suppose that means I'm going to have to start engaging a little more on Facebook, get busy on the dreaded X (formerly Twitter), and dive into Tik Tok (assuming the GOP -- the supposed party of individual freedom and the free market -- doesn't follow through and ban it).

It's called building a social media platform. You know, where you can go if you get a book published and shout from the digital mountaintop that everyone should go buy your book.

I also read that blogging is passé, that blogging has been passé for about a decade. We all know all trends eventually come back around, generally with new cool-sounding names. This is my push to bring bring about blogging's return, but we'll keep it hip and trendy by christening its new name --  platforming.

I'm officially platforming now.

Hopefully, I'll have more platforming for you all soon. For now, that's where I've been spending some of my time lately.

Thanks for reading!