Gary Hurtubise

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Tag: agent search

Darksea: A Winner at the 2016 Ozma Awards!

April 23, 2017 / / 8 Comments

So as it turned out, I was unable to make it out to Bellingham, Washington to attend the 2016 Ozma Awards Ceremony and Chanticleer Author’s Conference (life and stuff got in the way, sadly).  As such, I figured that my lack of attendance would negate any chance I had of winning (not being too sure how these types of awards work…).

Glumly, I watched the first weekend of April go by, waving my chance at winning goodbye.

And forgot about the whole thing…

…(Silly me!)

On a whim, I checked out the Chanticleer website tonight and came across this little bit of news:

How about that?!

The First In Category award winners are to receive a complimentary book review from Chanticleer, as well as a bunch of other promotional items.  And now I can say that my (as of yet unpublished) novel is an award winner!  Priceless.  😀

Thank you to Chanticleer Book Reviews for providing a platform for me to have my manuscript reviewed.  I’m feeling that much closer to turning Darksea into a real book – and me into a real author!   (Reject me now, literary agents!!)

Congratulations to Christopher, Elisabeth, Vijay, Raven, Nicole and Murray for their category wins, and especially to Vijay, for also winning the Ozma Grand Prize!

 

NaNoWriMo is Over… back to Agent Queries!

December 6, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Participate in NaNoWriMo, every November!

Have you heard about NaNoWriMo?  It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it takes place every November.  The goal: write a novel in a month (or, at least, write 50 000 words of it).

I first heard about it a little over three years ago, and was immediately skeptical of the premise: write 50 000 words in a month?!

Pshaw!  Not likely!

I tried it anyways, and did not succeed.  I tried again the year after, and again, failed.  This year, I was back at it, and came in woefully under-count, as I had two years running.

Am I disappointed in my results?

Well, yes.  Not at all!  Each November for the past three years, I managed to add thousands of words to my various novels.  I didn’t come close to 50 000, but thousands of words are certainly better than none.  This year, I used a good portion of October to world build my latest novel, then I managed to get over 20  000 words into it by the end of November.  Not too bad, considering my motivation recently had been lagging (see last post!).

I can’t think of any reason why I won’t participate again next year too.  Who knows – maybe 2016 will be the year I reach 50K!

Regardless of my result this year, NaNoWriMo served not only to springboard my next novel, but also got e re-energized with my writing.  I’ve got new ideas, new directions, and looming writing competition deadlines to work towards, and I’m looking forward to all of it. 🙂

First step: back on the agent search wagon.

I stopped submitting queries for the month of November, so that I could focus on my writing.

Now that we’re into December, I set myself the goal of getting my third batch of queries to agents out this past weekend, and I succeeded!  (While simultaneously neglecting entertaining the kids.  Gotta love multi-tasking.)  Coincidentally, I also receive a request for a partial manuscript from one of the agents from batch two, which was yet another boost to my motivation and confidence.  Things are starting to get rolling again!

Keep_calm

 

Contacted by my first Agent

September 21, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Four days after sending in my first batch of queries to agents, I received a request from one of them for a partial submission!  Very exciting, and a great boost to my confidence.  This coincided with one of my short stories coming up for critique through critters.org (for which I received a good 1/2-dozen descent ‘reviews’ of my work, which I can now put to good use in my next draft of it, before submitting it for publication), as well as the 24 hour writing contest through writersweekly.com this past Saturday, and a request to write two more articles for Gay Parent Magazine, to which I’ve been contributing for the past several years.

All told, a great week for writing.  It’s been keeping me so busy that I could almost mistake myself for a full-time writer!  (Soon, soon!)

This is my very first submission to the 24 hour writing competition, that I did back in early 2013.  It’s a fable about the four seasons, personified.  Hope you enjoy it, and don’t forget to check out some of my other fiction here.

 

Seven agents down… but how many to go?

September 16, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I am on the other side of history!

It’s nothing at that significant, of course; what I mean is, I’m looking back at having started my agent search, having dreaded the whole process for literally years!

Up until Friday 11th September 2015, I hadn’t really told many people about my novel: my husband, a close friend, and a handful of people on critters.org, who have absolutely no idea who I was anyways.  But now, I’ve sent my story out into the world, to professionals, who’s job it is to take seriously what I do in my spare time.  Which just feels weird to me, since I’m not quite sure I’ve been taking it seriously yet.

It was a bit surreal, when I hit <send> on that first e-mail query.  I couldn’t quite believe that I’d done it.  This is getting serious, I realized, though.  They’re going to laugh at me.

Oops.

Did I just think that?

They’re going to laugh at me?

Yeah.  I did just think that.  I can’t believe that I might actually make a living as a science fiction / fantasy writer.  I can’t believe that I might, one day, be an author.  That’s crazy talk.  That’s just a dream.  It’s just a joke.

…or is it?

Seven queries sent every two weeks, until further notice.  That’s the goal.  Let’s see if this dream can turn into… something much greater.

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