Too greedy

Some new friends on this page! I hope they look friendly enough.

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I’m still in vacation mode so I’m not looking at my mailbox. If you sent me something – I’m not even aware. I’ll be back in Tokyo on Tuesday, probably dead tired, so please be patient!

The trip has been great so far 🙂 I can’t say I rested well, but I saw new things, cycled a lot, and could somewhat focus on my next novel which was great. We still have a little bit planned and then I’ll just be chilling in the closed-down Tokyo. We left right before the emergency state :E

Also, I’m at the moment trying to write a query letter to the literary agents. It’s hard. How the hell do you summarize a 100k+ words book in two paragraphs…? Oh well, it’s not like I’m counting on it much.

Enjoy the page!

17 comments on “Too greedy”

  1. Rycan Reply

    The only thing more disquieting that the purple blobs wanting Ada dead is them wanting her alive.

  3. Refugnic Reply

    ‘You guys are greedy’, he exclaims,
    as the world goes down in flames.
    What was it, you called them for?
    Why, oh why, did you crave more?

    The rainbow legion, what’s their plan?
    What did they offer, tell me man!
    And what, oh what, do they demand?
    In the big picture, ambitions grand?

    Or are, by chance, they not quite real?
    Aspects of you, part of the deal?
    Expelled from you, they might well be,
    your inner demons that you set free.

    It really would be quite a shame,
    to see her die and leave the game.
    But sometimes losses must be taken,
    the pawns are dead, the king is shaken.

    The Bishop claims, ‘There is yet hope!’,
    the knight still stands, no time to mope!
    The queen is safe, the king is too.
    The game’s not over, joke’s on you.

  4. Alex Reply

    So aside from Replay and Historia you’re writing a novel, too? You really do live by that Japanese saying “work hard, play hard” or something like that. 🙂
    May I ask what the novel is about or is that additional pressure to find a short summary of your 100k+ words? 😉

    • NotImportant Reply

      Yep! Making comics and visual novels is fun, but I love writing the most. I probably mentioned this under the comic pages but every writer likes to blab about their work so I’ll happily explain myself ;D I’ve finished a fantasy novel recently and plan to start querying as soon as I whip up a kick-ass query letter (because, if I’m to try at all, I gotta give it my best). What the book is about? Adult fantasy, strong female protagonist (first person pov), action-packed and with hopefully somewhat unique setting.

      The story takes place 200 years after a huge cataclysm, supposedly caused by phantom-like creatures that are now completely gone. Why? Thanks to the Goddess and her Guardians who work very hard so that the peace continues – but to our main protagonist that might as well be just ghost stories and propaganda woven on a natural disaster. Sheena has her life figured out and everything would be fabulous if only her selfish, incredibly lucky vagabond of a younger brother didn’t take all of it to the grave with him. She inherits not only all his problems but also his pet-monster — a sassy, giant, shark-faced centipede that just doesn’t want to leave her the heck alone.

      It’s a journey through grief and the world’s mysteries, herbal-magic with well defined rules, tough choices, and delicious pastry.

      Ekhem. I hope that sounds interesting?… Oh well, even if no agent want it, I’ll just publish an ebook sometime later this year.
      So while this waits for a strike of luck, I’m working on another novel in the meantime. I hope to get it to “ready for beta-readers” state this year, we’ll see how that goes. It’s another fantasy, again with a femal protagonist, but in a much darker tone (a bit horror-like?) and takes place in a jungle. There are monsters, magic based on drumming, overcoming past traumas and abusive relationships.

      I have a third one coming too, but that one is still in the outlining / brainstorming stage.

      • Crestlinger Reply

        There. That. Use That as your summary. from ‘what is the book about?’ to ‘pastry’

        • NotImportant Reply

          Haha I know! It doesn’t sound too bad. I changed it a little and sent it to an agent who offers critique on those things. We’ll see what she says.

      • Alex Reply

        Yup, it sounds very interesting indeed. For me the description is plenty good enough, but I have no idea what literary agents expect. I hope you don’t just have an all-or-nothing one-shot, but that at least some agents take the time to actually give feedback and immerse themselves a little into what they get sent. A strict overprofessionalized bureaucratic drone would probably not be a good partner anyway. Some years ago I watched a video of someone who wanted to publish a book and the publisher she chose wouldn’t even let her design the cover, so she did the right thing and went somewhere else.

        Btw: How exactly are the goddess and her guardians working hard for peace? I mean, if they’re nothing but a myth to the protagonist, then the amount of things they can actually do must be very limited or else they’d be acknowledged as real, right?

        About the other novel:
        Which kind of horror are you going for with it? I.e. are the monsters the gory rampaging type like in Replay or the spooky kind like cursed dolls and vengeful spirits? I assume the former, but if the magic is based on drums I can also imagine a ghost that haunts people with drum sounds. Like that one boss in Zelda OOT where you have to run around on a literal giant drum. 🙂

        • NotImportant Reply

          I admit that I have little idea myself. But I found a literary agent offering a critique on a query and it looked very reasonable so I’ll give it a shot and see haha I sent them something very similar. Once the agent likes the query (the idea for the book seems interesting), they read the first couple of pages from the manuscript. If they like that as well (writing is good) they request the full book. If they like the whole thing they offer a contract of representation. Most agents don’t even reply to queries they don’t find interesting so I’ll probably just send my letters, wait a couple of months and then pay for editing (no reason for you guys to suffer through my typos) and publish an ebook.

          Not being able to pick your own cover (and title!) is pretty standard. This is because it’s such a huge portion of the marketing effort that they can’t risk the author messing it up. I’m not attached to my titles so I don’t care. For the cover, I’d probably be picky but I know that I can’t comprehend marketing so whatever… As long as they don’t tell me to make my male character a female because lesbian romance will sell better I’m probably fine 😀 Actually… I might consider changing that character hahahahah

          I don’t want to explain too much because – spoilers! But I can give more background about the Guardians. They have a ritual that they do for every baby. Thanks to that, you’re supposedly safe from the monsters. If you don’t do it – well, the monster will appear, but nobody dares to try and defy the Guardians to check. They haven’t seen the monsters for 200 years, so the protagonist can’t even tell if they’re just propaganda or not. She finds out later~

          For the second book, the setting is kinda weird. Whenever you go to sleep, you visit the monster’s realm (it’s not a choice, it just happens). If they catch you there, they’ll infest your body and sprout from it a couple days later. So it’s both ghost-like and gory at the same time? The whole idea is that the people in the story sleep very little – only 20 minutes each 6 hours and they have various tricks defenses against those monsters. Of course, things go badly and the main girl needs to fix the mess. What I like the most about this story is that there’s also a mute boy there and the way they struggle to communicate is just so adorable <3<3<3 (fangirling over my own book lol)

          • Alex

            Okay, I did not expect that titles and covers are commonly not decided on by the authors, but then again: Most novel authors aren’t able to draw well. You however could just ask them what kind of cover they’d like to see and then draw it yourself at least. I bet that it’ll be prettier if you do it and also your drawing style is part of your brand. Just show them some comic pages and Historia.

            Your fans won’t suffer when going through your typos and their cost likely won’t be more than a copy of the book each (and some of them will buy the finished version anyway), but I understand if you’d rather pay a professional for it. I mean, there IS a huge difference between finding 100% and finding 99% of them and sadly typos are more elusive than one might think. But a pro is expensive, so maybe if you hire 10 of your fans they’ll be as good as one pro?

            Thanks for the insights on both books. They both sound great, but sleep-deprivation is not my cup of tea. I felt so bad for the MC of Troll Hunters and only started really liking the show when they stopped showing him being tired halfway through the first season. But I do think your idea is fine.

          • NotImportant

            She’s not sleep deprived – this is how they live so she’s used to it. So it’s not a book about not being able to sleep, no worries xD I think writing that would make me really frustrated. Like a book about being hungry lol

            I don’t mind paying a pro, but I need to find a good one. If someone is going to just take my money and go through it with grammarly… well, I did that already. So that part might be tricky. But we’ll see!

            I’m going to draw my own cover (because I can!) but if a professional marketing person tells me they have a better idea I’ll believe them. I think small publishing houses let you pick your own illustration but the big ones probably have a whole team of people brainstorming that for a month lol 😀

            Thanks for being interested! <3

          • Alex

            Oh, if they don’t need more sleep than that, then that’s fine. I haven’t read the hunger games yet, either. 😉

            I just googled the estimated costs for a pro and 100k+ words might very well be more than 1000$. Are you sure that that’s worth it for proof-reading alone? I mean, of course I don’t know how much money you make with your stories, but given that you have a job aside from being an independent artist this feels like it’s gonna cut deeply into your profits. So, even if there weren’t any risk of paying a grammarly-pro, I’d still ask around the fanbase if someone would like to do it in exchange for a copy of the ebook.

            Also, if a whole team brainstorms your cover for a month, then you must be incredibly lucky. 😉 But they should still include you in their sessions, because authorial intent matters. If they have a better idea than yours, then you can still draw the better idea, because branding.

          • JW

            A pro is not going to find 100% of mistakes either. Heck, I just read “the the” in a bona fide published book. Pretty sure if they ran grammarly it would have found that.
            On the other hand I have read enough unedited stories to know a good editor is invaluable. And not just for grammar and typos.

            Anyway. I was thinking a few days back while voting on TCW that maybe it might be fun if you put up one paragraph(?) at a time of your story as vote incentive.

          • NotImportant

            It’s a cool idea for when I give up on publishing traditionally! It will be very hard to keep up with the story that way hahaha but posting some teasers might be cool

  5. Halftea Reply

    When either of those are ready for publishing, please let us know. I would buy either one of those to read. They sound amazing.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Oh, I will for sure! You guys will beg me to shut up about them 😀

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