by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One of my Readers finally got back to me and while she liked the first three chapters of the novel in general, she did mention that she found it “racy.” Add to this that all my other Readers have completely ghosted me for some reason and it’s all led to a great deal of angst over the status of this novel.
My heroine sports a sleeve tattoo much like this one that Megan Fox now has, but I thought of the idea first.
But every time I lose faith, I realize that this novel is existential for me. I really believe in it and I want to finish a novel by the time the 20th anniversary of my first trek to Asia happens on July 22nd. As such, lulz, what else am I going to do but finish the novel?
All of this self-doubt HAS made me think even more seriously about a backup plan. My fear is the novel IS too “racy” and, as such, will make the liberal white women who are most literary agents blanch. This is probably the most rattled I’ve been about this project since I first started it.
And I have to admit that if I was younger and had a career, this might be the point where I would either just give up or piviot hard to some other novel project. But that’s just not the state I’m in at the moment. I really want to get this novel done ASAP so I can begin to query it in a traditional manner.
I want to write a heroine as interesting as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.
The novel tells a cogent, coherent story that I think the audience will really enjoy. And the “racy” nature of it isn’t fatal — if all else fails, I can always finesse things in an effort to tone things down.
But I do really want to think hard about a backup scifi novel. I want a backup in case my fears about this novel being considered too “racy” come true. The scifi novel will have A LOT less sex in it and that might position as something that might be more marketable.
