April 23, 2006
I just completed DANCING IN THE DARK, my most recent novel.

As most of you know who have followed this, I'm writing it with the notion of getting it published under a pseudonym. I hope, as well, that it will be the start of a series.

I spent much of the weekend reading the manuscript with a blue felt pen, making minor changes, catching typos, plus a larger re-write of the epilogue. I've spent the last couple hours doing the tedious business of making those changes on disk and printing out the changed pages.

Probably on Tuesday I'll photocopy it and send it to my agent Irene. With any luck she'll read it in a couple weeks, love it and get going on marketing it.

Even though, to-date, I have one self-published book (Catfish Guru), one book published by a small press (Dirty Deeds), and signed a 2-book contract with Midnight Ink/Llewellyn Worldwide (The Devil's Pitchfork and The Serpent's Kiss), I don't know if Dancing will be published. I suppose if it makes the rounds of the big publishers and doesn't get picked up, there's a fair chance Midnight Ink will pick it up under my own name or otherwise, at least if the Derek Stillwater novels sell well. I hope to continue writing Derek Stillwater novels and having them published by Midnight Ink for as long as it's agreeable to both of us.

See? No guarantees in this business. I don't know if you ever get to that point where you say, "Yup, I've made it. Whatever I write will be published." Maybe. But I'm not there yet. I do know that I like the novel, thought it was fun to write, should be fun to read, and ought to be appealing to publishers.

In the meantime, I've got a large paying gig I've got to get started on, roughly equivalent to a nonfiction book, plus a number of other deadlines to attend to.

I'll keep you posted.

Best,
Mark Terry