Legends from the Land of My Keyboard
Updated: Jul 17, 2019
Hello and welcome to the landofshaarn.com Blog!
I'm P.D. I write Dark Epic Fantasy novels under the title Legends from the Land of Shaarn.
I know they say that a blog should have a specific topic in order to be successful but I like to break the mould a little and this blog will be my outlet to speak to the public on whatever topic I feel like. Why? Cuz it's my blog! LOL
I'm 43 years old. I've lived in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada my whole life. I worked in marketing for years as an advertising consultant and before that as an account manager handling inventory and promotions for major restaurant chains in the Saskatchewan market.
I got my start cooking and became a chef working in fine dining restaurants and hotels in the city of Regina.
All of that bored the living crap out of me. All I ever wanted to do was write. When I was about sixteen years old I started writing poetry. It was mostly corny love poems to my girlfriends, but they loved it and hey, it got me the babes and an audience so I can't complain.
In my twenties I started thinking about writing novels but I was too busy with work and life and all I really did was think about it. In my early thirties I started writing an outline for a fantasy series. I got quite involved in it and decided after awhile to start writing, the problem was that I was basically retelling the story of the Prophecy movies so I nixed that and started over.
The Land of Shaarn was born! I started out with a fantasy map, hand drawn to give me an idea of what this continent looked like and started naming places. I remember thinking that i wanted it to be a small fantasy world. As the names became concrete so to did the ideas for what to write about and I started writing the first book.
Now this didn't just POOF! itself into existence. I'll admit I wrote the first draft very quickly and with no knowledge of what it takes to get a book published but, I was on my way. I had more than 900 pages and one hell of a story to sell.
I started out researching how to query literary agents and went to it. I sent out ten to start with and waited. Nothing. Tumbleweeds rolled passed my keyboard. Crickets didn't just chirp they laughed and pointed.
I changed up my letter and sent out ten more queries a few months later. This time I actually got formally hand typed rejections from some agents.
One agent took an interest and asked me to send him my manuscript. I didn't hear back for months so I contacted him. He told me he'd been very busy teaching a class and that he'd read my manuscript soon. Three more months passed and nothing back from this joker so I emailed him again, and again, and again.
Let me say this to all the agents and publishers out there. PLEASE, from the bottom of my heart at least send out a form rejection. Us writers need to know where we stand and if that happens to be at the bottom of your waste paper basket then so be it. But this business of no response is your rejection? Well I don't accept that. It's unprofessional and downright nasty to leave a person hanging like that. I never did hear back from that agent.
I got discouraged with writing, had some major hurdles in my personal life, started a new job and decided to put my writing aside for a few years.
Eventually I wanted to get back at it and wanted to tackle it from a new angle so I decided to start screening freelance editors to help me polish my manuscript. I was able to afford to do the first five chapters and then personal life issues flared up once more and the writing went to the wayside again for a while.
About three months ago I was on the brighter side of the challenges that were holding me back from writing and getting published and I decided it was time to stop querying agents and start querying actual publishers who accept open submissions. There aren't many.
I'm always reading articles about the publishing world and how to get noticed, how to get ahead who to query, etc. One such article suggested that it's not always in your best interests to query large publishing houses. The article basically said, large publishing houses offer the prestige of their name and they may have distribution reach a smaller publisher might not, but that they lack the support of a fledgling publishing house to grow new writers' reader base and to market for you.
I took this to heart having worked for a couple of large faceless corporations and seeing first hand how they treat their "smaller," customers.
I queried the little guys first. They allowed me to send the full manuscript for the first book which had been divided into two smaller books and I even took a shot and queried them for another three books I had outlined to write. I figured what the hell, worst they can say is no.
They said yes to the five book series! I was so excited. I was already several pages into writing the third book and only had two left to write once it was done.
Now I'm editing the first book in the Legends from the Land of Shaarn series entitled Awakening, working on an author logo, working on cover art and editing the back of book jacket blurb with their editing and design team! It's very exciting!
My first book will be published fall of 2019 and I will be announcing my publisher and the official release date July 14, 2019.
Stay Tuned for more information about Legends from the Land of Shaarn in my next blog entry!
Same Shaarn time! Same Shaarn station!