David Weller Author Blogspot

Looking at the statistics for yesterday I could see that those who viewed my blog did so either late at night or early in the morning.

Discovering a blog on the internet is like finding a needle in a haystack. If you've read any of my posts, chances are that you sat on them by mistake. I can only hope the content wasn't too painful.

It's been a while since I posted an update so I thought I'd write one now and tell you what I've been up to. Apart from uploading excerpts from Truthseeker I've done very little writing. The nice summer we've been having is definitely responsible for any lack of desire to stay indoors and work. However, the past couple of days has seen progress being made. I've carried out some editing on Secret of Heathcote Manor and written the third chapter of Beyond Ragnarok. Both of these are aimed at MG readers. I'm still trying to decide what to do with Truthseeker. Every time I tell myself it's time to self publish I get either a request for pages or a personalized rejection. A couple of days ago I received one from an agent who said that whilst it wasn't for her, it was one of the strongest submissions she'd seen in recent months. So, do I carry on down the long road towards traditional publishing or just bite the bullet and download to Amazon?

At the last count this blog has attracted viewers from 21 countries around the world. The US accounted for 77% of views with 16% from the UK.  The other 7% was made up of views from the following countries: Portugal Germany France Sweden Russia Brunei Ireland Poland Netherlands Italy Ukraine Latvia Denmark Brazil Argentina Australia Singapore Romania Spain Many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read my posts.

I submitted the first 50 pages of Truthseeker to a 'reputable' literary agent in London last October. In early December I received a request for the full manuscript. Great, I thought. Progress! Three months passed without any response. I gave them a polite nudge and waited patiently. Still no response. Might have been filtered out as spam, I thought so I sent another polite email. Guess what? No response. Whilst I can understand that no response equals no interest for unsolicited queries, I do believe an inquiry regarding a full manuscript deserves some form of reply. To completely ignore an author's request for information is, quite frankly, rude. Mind you, I shouldn't have been surprised. A thread on Absolute Write regarding this agent is filled with complaints of this nature. The sad thing is that this kind of behaviour appears to be fairly widespread. I submitted material to an an agent in the US in February 2015 and received a request for the full manus...

It's now three calendar months since I sent off the full manuscript for Truthseeker. I gave a polite nudge after 12 weeks but still haven't received a reply. Of course this could be nothing to worry about. On the other hand it might be a case of no response equals no further interest. Sadly, this kind of scenario seems to be fairly common when dealing with literary agents and I've come across numerous complaints of this nature. I recently read an article by a reputable agent who condemns this kind of behaviour and cautions against working with people who engage in it. As she points out, this might be a sign of problems further down the road. I'm inclined to agree and would not be comfortable working with any agent who is unable to treat me with even a basic level of courtesy. Agents might be busy people, but not so busy that they are unable to respond to an author whose work they have requested. A part of me says give them the benefit of the doubt. They might be...

When I began the editing process I had little trouble finding things that required improvement. Four major rewrites, and hundreds of editing hours, later I was beginning to struggle. After I received a request for the full manuscript, in December, I put it aside for three months. Over the past couple of weeks I've read it again and found things which my tired eyes missed on previous passes. Although minor in nature it's still irritating that I missed such glaring errors. Most were to do with punctuation and I found a missing full stop in one chapter, an unnecessary question mark in another and a few commas which I really had to think about. I also found a few phrases in the narrative which needed tweaking. Having been through the whole manuscript, and rectified these things, I'm left wondering what else I've missed. I'm also left wondering how many more times I'll need to go through it again.