The Next Step

Hey, remember that other book I wrote? You know, that untitled one? Yeah. I should really work on that too, right?

I realized yesterday that in all my work with Spirit Hackers, I haven't talked about my Robert book. There is good reason for that: nothing has been going on at all with it. A matter of fact, my last entry talking about it was on April 7th, where I talked about how I sent the book to some beta readers and I was waiting for the feedback. Unfortunately that seemed to not go according to plan. I had three beta readers set up and I received the following feedback: one reader gave me my Word file back with great suggestions, corrections and comments. The second felt uncomfortable (for reasons I won't say here) and I only got a small sample (one page) with suggestions / corrections. The third read it but didn't give feedback, but his girlfriend did. That feedback consisted of four sentences referring to an item or two within the book. Now I know the book is almost 60k long, but I didn't expect things to go this bad.

Now before you comment on it, I know the Absolute Write forums has a beta area but I don't want to venture there just yet. I need to really see what is going on with the Robert book and more importantly decide what I want to do with it. In my heart of hearts, I am unsure if the book is really that good and if it even has a chance. I look at my idea for Spirit Hackers and the work I've put into it and I feel much more optimistic with that WIP rather than the untitled story.

So where does this leave me? Perhaps the book is destined to be a 'trunk novel' and just live on my harddrive. I've considered putting it up for POD or perhaps podcasting it as a podiobook, but I'm not sure. I could always submit it out for agents or publishers but again I'm not sure if it's strong enough. Right now, my plan is to go through another round of editing using the main beta feedback I got as a guide. I'm hoping to fatten it up a little and also get the story to flow better. One key scene my wife read needs a big overhaul.

It's weird to have a book that I wrote that I don't have such faith in anymore. Is it wrong for me to discount it? Should I just push on and send it out to agents? It's difficult to say for sure. What I do know is that no matter what, I've written a novel and that puts me ahead of the curve as most people out there who think they should do it, never do. I will always have the satisfaction in knowing I did get to accomplish that goal.