The full length novel draft of Gorracula that I completed in 2019 had a short life. I took it to the writer's conference, pitching it to a series of polite but un-interested agents. I also used it to query a series of other potential agents throughout the remainder of that year. It went nowhere. I handed it to a few friends to get opinions and one of them got back to me with some very useful feedback. The main part being that it was a mess from a grammatical and punctation standpoint. I knew that much just based on my long familiarity with my own limitations but he also gave me good insight into what had worked and what hadn't in the story.
Mostly though I had begun to doubt the draft's value. It felt over stuffed and unfocused and I did not feel equal to the task of rebuilding without knowing in better detail in which direction to take it. Gorracula was once again put back in the closet of ideas.
By the end of 2020 I had begun working again on another old idea of a similar vintage to Gorracula. The friend who had given me feedback on the draft was also someone with whom I had maintained creative contact over the years and back in 2010 we had taken turns writing entries toward a proposed Sci-fi Comedy Detective story called Johnny Spacehair and the Oil of Ages.
I had kept the start we had made because it was amusing nonsense and it tickled me to occasionally read it back and work on it. As of late 2020 I had begun a concerted effort to complete Johnny Spacehair. By April or so of 2021 it was completed and I sent it to the short list of possible outlets for a 14,000 word Sci-Fi comedy. There were no takers.
I was however proud of it and enjoyed reading it myself so I decided to self publish. The experience was fairly neutral. A few people read it. I got some good feedback and then it settled into the background of my life. But it did give me a small shiver of pride when I reminded myself that I had completed something that I was proud of and could point to and say, "This, this is what I can do."
The cycle repeated its self with another old idea, this time a stylish steam punk adventure called The Altitude of Kings. It was another story whose seed had been planted around 2010-11, in communications with that same friend. I started plugging away at finishing it while also developing other ideas. It eventually landed as a nearly 25,000 word novella and again I was very happy with it.
I decided, given the satisfaction I felt regarding these first two stories, neither of which had any natural home in the traditional publishing world (Works over 10,000 but under 50,000 words are pretty much still born for traditional publishers) that I would just become my own brand and aim at churning out my growing list of story ideas as short pieces that I liked at that were entirely my own. They would be the evidence of myself to myself and anyone else who wanted to read them was welcome too.
Thus 2023 was largely spent banging out a fourth and final version of the Gorracula story. It combined elements from all previous versions and pared away most of the side plots and secondary characters. But it also gained new aspects and elements. But this time they were things that served to propel the story rather than divert it into long side plots. The result is fairly lean and I like it very much. It clocks in at just under 35,000 words and tells the story of a university professor in the early 1960s experimenting with the cognitive development of a gorilla. It features horror, romance, rock music, Shakespeare, and drive in movies and it has finally reached its final form.
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