Tuesday, January 9, 2018

My Current and Ongoing Book-Length Projects


Here are the books I'm working on right now:


Sway: New and Collected Stories - Made up of around 30 new stories not before collected together along with the stories from my first two collections The Same Terrible Storm and Where Alligators Sleep. Should come in at about 200 stories in total.


Evergreen - A long and ongoing book I'm writing about an immortal serial killer and his three immortal siblings. It's strange and may topple at any moment and be gone and never able to actually exist. It has even, at times, been a kind of dumping ground for thoughts and ideas too fully formed to simply note in a journal, etc. There has been one excerpted short story from this book called "Drowning the Witch" that was published last year at Peach Mag. You can read that story here.


What Do You Want For It? (working title) - A book started just this week about a hillbilly guy named Sister Hall who just so happens to be an art genius, as in being able to recognize great art the second he sees it. Taking a guy like that (from Eastern Kentucky) and putting him in the strange sort of non-world of the art world is the whole thing in this for me.


I've yet to find an agent and probably wouldn't do well if I did because I'm generally not cut out for the world of literature and art being a hillbilly, though educated. Still, a hillbilly. Publishing houses and so called reputable journals, etc. mostly don't want books from writers such as myself unless there are guns and drugs and violence in them. I've done that already and so now I'm off to write other things. This is to say I'll be publishing these books myself through my press Shivelight Books. For now that means I can only make them available as Kindle books because I can't figure out formatting to upload for print through Kindle Direct Publishing. If anyone can toss me a couple tips on that, I surely wouldn't mind.


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3 comments:

  1. Marcus SpehJanuary 15, 2018 at 10:00 AM

    Dear Shel, I am also interested in this KDP deal for print versions of the novel I'm writing. I don't really see myself submit this anywhere - no particular reason, but I rather spend my spare time on putting more words on paper, though my experiences with publishers were OK. I am an IT guy and I should be able to figure it out. Will let you know as soon as I come up with something. On my list of things to do now. Lit agents should love you though, I think. Anyone should, really. Cheers from Berlin!

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    Replies
    1. Shel ComptonJanuary 15, 2018 at 10:23 AM

      Oh man Marcus if you were to figure this out and let me know that would be great. Thanks as always for the kind words, too. I'm beginning to think that the only way I'm going to get an agent is by having amazing work published and one of them maaayyybe reading it and taking a chance by reaching out. It's probably my bitterness or something but I'm also beginning to think that a lot of agents are secured through friends recommending, etc. It's like some kind of Ivy League situation or something I don't know. But all of that is to say that I'm actually pretty cool with self-publishing my books. I know there's going to be a lot of mistakes in there, number one, and there's also going to be points that aren't given the attention they should be that could have been pointed out with a good editor, but that's the price to pay, I suppose.

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    2. Marcus SpehJanuary 17, 2018 at 7:50 AM

      We may simply be too old for the market from a lit agent's point of view. Theirs is, with necessity, primarily commercial and you don't see many late comers out there. I'm saying "we" though you're probably younger than I am but same ballpark I reckon (b. 1963). I had a literary agent, top notch actually, but I could not deliver anything in German for her so the connection dried up & I stopped caring. It was the equivalent of an "Ivy League" connection though, just as you assumed. Frankly, all my (extra) energy is invested in struggling with the muses. Apart from the points you mention, that seems to be the prime part to be played by agents: to take all that extra marketing stuff off your shoulders. Make it easy to focus on stories. As a working man, I'm used to juggle different tasks though - so adding the self publishing burden doesn't scare me. I'll be in touch as soon as I get there...

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