Today I received my shiny Honorable Mention certificate in the mail from the first quarter Writers of the Future contest. Also enclosed was the first page of my manuscript with a handwritten note by judge K.D. Wentworth that reads, "Nicely written! Keep entering!"
The story in question, The Golden Larynx, was shipped off to another market the same day the finalists and semifinalists were announced and I saw I was not on either of those lists. I feel good about this story and plan to keep shopping it around until somebody buys.I've got my head deep into the new novel now, and though writing progress is slow, I'm fleshing out the world quite a bit. I know more about the social order and religions of my world, and about my protagonist and how naive she actually is. Poor thing. I'm putting her through a lot in the first chapter. I still feel there is eventually going to be a second plot woven in with the current one, and it will become clear once I have a stronger sense of the socio-political backdrop against which the story is set. Currently, the plot arc as I see it deals mostly with a woman's personal struggles to come to terms with her own thwarted desires and to develop as an artist. There's a romance angle, though in a way the book is an anti-romance. There are lawsuits. There are disguises. There are power struggles between wife and husband, and between church and state. There's lots of music.