BBKristopher.com

So, yesterday I finished the rewrite on Meredith MacKenzie and the Uruk Empire. And by finished I mean got it back from the person who very generously proofread it for free, went through the whole novel and excepted the changes (except for 2 I think), made any further revisions my proofreader thought necessary for clarity's sake and then fell asleep on the couch at 4:00 AM after saving the file.

Then I sent it off to an agent who's offered to read it. This agent has seen it before, and offered to reread it after a rewrite. The rewrite ended up involving about 60K words of new material, and the removal of a lot of old material. The book grew, a bit in length, but simply put, this novel is a lot better than the one I was querying for a year ago. Tons better. To the point where I don't think I could have written something of this quality back when I started work on Meredith.

I have an agent to thank for that. The agent I resubmitted to, specifically. And whether she ends up becoming my agent or not, I am profoundly grateful today that she took the time to read my work a year ago and send me a personalized rejection, with a critique and words of encouragement. I am also extremely grateful to my critique group, who has spent most of the last year telling me everything I did right, but much more importantly, everything I did wrong.

Now, I just have to sit back for the next few weeks and wait. Something I'm horrible at. But that's part of the price of doing business.