Hello

[The Wizard Gethwin]

Hello from Tasmania!

I'm a 40yo teacher (among many other things) who has recently gotten bitten by the fantasy writing bug. Perhaps I should re-infected, as I used to write a lot when I was younger.

Now, 7 books later, and I'm still writing, though my typing fingers are sore.

My first 6 books were sort of epic fantasy, in a way, but with a fair bit of Sword and Sorcery feel to them. They centre around Lydia Estrella, a young woman who finds herself becoming an assassin against her will. There's lots of blood! The first book is currently being looked at by a couple of publishers, and has made it past the first round with at least one.

My seventh was sort of sword and planet meets steampunk. I'm working on cleaning it up for submission, and hope to have it done in final form before x-mas. It's 123,000 words though, so it's slow work!

When I'm not writing I enjoy spending time with my wife and daughter, bushwalking, photography, gardening and reading.

Nice to meet you all!

[H.P. Lovesauce]

7 novels? Holy crap! That's a lot of writing.

Good on you, and welcome.

[The Wizard Gethwin]

Well- I never said they were good novels LOL

[cussedness]

The fact that you could stick to it that long is a good indication, Gethwin.

[Jaqhama]

G'day G

Welcome to SF Reader.

I lived in Tassie for a year back in 1999.
Riverside in Launceston.
Loved it, but then I'm into motorbiking and bushwalking and mountain biking, and what better place than Tassie for all of that, hey?

7 books is a huge effort mate, well done.

You using Aussie or overseas agents/publishers?
I only ask because as you must know the Aussie literary agency list is brief to say the least.
I subbed a novel to Creswell recently, still waiting on a reply.

Cheers: Jaq

[The Wizard Gethwin]

I've gone the shotgun approach. I've tried about 8-10 American and Canadian publishers, and about the same number of Aussie ones. No real joy with the American ones, though Baen and someone else over there are still looking at my first novel. I've had nibbles from a couple of smaller Aussie publishers, but no joy with the bigger ones.

I spoke to a few authors about agents, and the general advice I got was that they are harder to get than a publisher, so I didn't bother with them. But if I have no luck with my current round of submissions I may try for one, as most of the big publishers won't consider work unless it is through an agent.

It's a pain, because the first 6 books were a series, or actually the beginning of a 9-part series, and I have wondered if that proved to be a bit intimidating for small-time publishers. Who knows? I need to get the seventh one cleaned up, and then I might try for an agent this time, before doing the unsolicited submission thing again. But it's giant (almost 130k words), and I'm sick of it! LOL

[Samuel Mae]

Welcome to SFReader, TWG.

The writing bug is a good bug to catch. Editing: not always quite so fun

[The Wizard Gethwin]

I'd say. It's taking forever with my latest book. At least, because I wrote it like a year ago, a lot of it seems new to me. LOL