August Update

I seriously considered delaying this newsletter, because I have no news to share, but you all deserve to hear where things are, because of the big announcements I made in the last newsletter.

Television Pitch

I received an email from the Kellers in the US – they’re back at work there because they had an effective vaccine rollout – and the Dark Heavens TV series will be pitched to a major (like, really major) US studio on August 16th. I don’t expect to hear anything from them for a few days afterwards, because these things usually take more time than anyone expects.

‘Dark Heavens’ isn’t the only ‘intellectual property’ that’s being pitched at the meeting, the Kellers have a few TV projects that they’d like to get off the ground. I’ll pass the info on the result on as soon as I hear anything.

‘Minds of Sand and Light’

If the TV pitch wait is stressful, the NY agent wait is even more stressful. I’ve been following up after submitting ‘Minds’ to a really big NY literary agent a few weeks ago – and he emailed back to say that he hasn’t even looked at it yet, and to be patient. There’s no guarantee that he’ll accept the work to shop to publishers, so I have to wait until he makes a decision about it.

I can’t shop it to anyone else because it’s industry standard to shop to one agent at a time. The author has wasted their time if they read a manuscript that’s accepted by someone else.

This sort of long delay is completely normal for the publishing industry – I had one rejection eighteen months after I submitted the work to the publisher.

So what now?

Waiting for the results of the two big decisions above, either of which could be life changing, and are totally out of my control, has me struggling to be creative. Instead I’m teaching myself scriptwriting software, and writing scripts for both ‘Dark Heavens’ and ‘Minds’ so that I can have some creative input. Surprisingly it’s great fun!

I’m continuing to work and add to the Dark Heavens spinoff – and some of the new stuff is excellent! So the patrons are enjoying that. In the meantime, wish me luck, fingers crossed. A ‘Dark Heavens’ TV series would be terrific.