Out

After eight drafts and 10 full readthroughs, it's done.

I've sent Dark Water to the first few publishers. I'll be submitting it to more publishers over the next few days, aiming for mid-sized companies that specialize in Canadian crime fiction.

The first publisher I chose has a Web page that lays out exactly how they like their submissions. It also took me a couple of hours to put everything together.

They wanted an introductory e-mail, that summarized my project and included a few attachments. The first attachment was the full manuscript, in a PDF. They also wanted a full synopsis, of no more than one single-spaced page.

The synopsis was the tricky part. While I've written a synopsis that lays out the intro of the story with the main characters, I've never summarized the whole story, including spoilers. Doing that on only one page was really hard and I had to pare it down as much as I could, leaving out some of the red herrings and subplots.

But at least I have a full synopsis that I can use again.

The publisher also wanted a CV of my other published work, and this got a bit tricky. I only have one other novel that's been published, but it's self-published. I also have this blog, which has been around since 2011, has more than 3,100 posts, and nearly 1.9-million views.

They don't really count, do they?

In my introductory e-mail message, I did mention that I've been a writer for high tech for 25 years. I mentioned Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary and The Brown Knowser blog. But I said Dark Water is my first foray into crime fiction.

I was a ball of nerves and my index finger shook after I wrote the introduction message, attached the manuscript and synopsis, and was about to click Send. Almost immediately after, I received an automatic reply from the publisher which stated that they had received my submission. I could expect a response within four months.

Four months! That seems an eternity but at least I have an official receipt.

I was exhausted after submitting the manuscript. I don't remember feeling this anxious after sending my first novel, JT, to publishers. With that manuscript, I received rejection letters from every publishing house, but one form letter contained hand-written words of encouragement around the margins of that letter.

If not for that letter, I might have given up on becoming a writer.

I plan to submit queries to as many Canadian crime-fiction publishers as I can, and then I'll continue work on the next Calloway and Hayes mystery, The Watcher. And hopefully, not all responses will come in the form of rejection.

The worst-case scenario is that I look once again into self publishing. But that would be my last-ditch effort.

Wish me luck and stay tuned.