Finnegans Awake
I’ve decided to start shopping this novel around. It is the first Finnegans novel I wrote, and it’s a story my wife and I concocted based (only in part) on an incident that happened to us. I finished it more than two years ago, and I set it aside, thinking it might have all been merely apprentice work. I read through it over the weekend, though, and thought it seemed pretty good.
There is one small addition I intend to make to it, then I’m going to scrape together a query letter/pitch and start sending it out. (Actually, I’ve been toying with a pitch for a few weeks.) That will mean I will have two sets of queries prowling the land. I understand that it is perfectly acceptable to pitch a different novel (Awake) to an agent that has already declined the other novel (Festive). Perhaps that will increase my odds of finding an agent.
The story deals with blackmail — sexual blackmail — and the Finnegans figure out a way to put a stop to it. I’ve thrown in some interesting characters, and I really think the last few sentences of the final chapter deliver a great emotional punch. It made me tear up, and I wrote the thing.
It only clocks in at 66,000 words, which I realize is on the lean side of the limit, but I think the story is whole as it is written, and anything further would either be fluff or the addition of more plot than is really necessary.
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