Starting a New Novel

Last week I finally decided to start a new novel. In between all the blogging, and promoting all thirty plus titles in the current SJS DIRECT catalog, I haven’t had much time to write a full novel.

If anyone has been watching my catalog, most of the books I’ve been publishing have been YA novelettes like the Isis series or Non-fiction shorts like The Simp Trilogy. Books that have been in the 10,000-15,000 word range.

The last novel I wrote The Thetas was around 75,000 words. And the one before that The Temptation of John Haynes was about 95,000 words.

For the past few years I’ve been writing Young adult/All Ages material. With this new novel I’m planning on exploring more of the adult themes I featured in my earlier books like A Recipe For $ucce$$ and All About Marilyn. 

I needed a break from writing fantasy and I decided to write a contemporary novel. I’ve had these ideas for a quirky offbeat comedy in my head for a while. Something with no social commentary on the Black community or some statement about Black issues. Like my original plan for The Cassandra Cookbook, just a basic simple story about people. With all the ideas brewing in my head I decided it wastime to put fingers to the keyboard and get to work.

I’ve been avoiding writing a new novel because it take a lot of time to plan, outline, and write. And there’s a lot more risk in selling a novel than a novelette or a short. If I write a novelette and it doesn’t sell, I can charge it to the game and move on to the next book.

But if a novel fails, I lose money on over two or three years’ worth of work. Novels are a huge risk and a writer not only loses money, but time. It usually takes me a year to complete a first draft of a novel and another year to get a book to where I’m pleased with the finished product.

And in that time the market can change, or when I release the book, readers can just reject it.

I’ve still got plans for more Isis series books and blogs, but I want to focus more of my time on this new novel. So if there are slowdowns, or blogs aren’t posted, well…I’m in the middle of a new novel.

I’m up to about Chapter 10 on this new book, and so far, it’s going in the direction I planned.

I’ll let everyone know how it’s going in the progress report around Christmastime. Stay tuned for another Progress report next week.