Podcast?

[maxonennis]

My latest finished novel, PHYLES (of which I will continue submitting as soon as I finish my second draft), is a work I really like. The problem is I don’t think it’s publishable. The tense, the POV, and the characters all add up to be too weird for me to be able to see any publisher having any real interest in buying.

I, like many of  the posters on here, have recently become addicted to Bob Defendi’s podcast novel Death By Clique. (For those of you who haven’t heard it yet, check it out at www.playtesting.net, you haven’t been born until you’ve heard the first episode.) Listening to it makes me wonder if my own work wouldn’t be better suited for self publication in podcast form. Of course that would mean I would have to spend a year saving up money for podcasting equipment, and software, but I was wondering what you guys thought about it. IF I did this, would anyone listen to it? (It would be free, no one would pay to listen to my crap.)

(Note: by making a podcast of the novel I would be giving up any chances of selling electronic rights if by some off chance that a publisher did want it.)

[Reaves]

Before you write yourself off as unpublishable, I would at least look at other publishers and see if they are interested. Also, you have to consider that Bob Defendi's voice undoubtedly helps make the podcast easier to like. (I've never checked out the podcast, but I've heard him on Writing Excuses.)

[Necroben]

And while I'm leaning this the hard way; find an agent.  They'll be the perfect people to tell you whether or not your story is publishable.

[maxonennis]

Reaves, I am planning to send it out to both agents and publishers after I've had it looked over by you fine folk, but it's just too...

Well here, I post up a summary of the novel I'd used as roughdaft query. I repete, a rough draft of a query, not a final product. Note, I've already made several changes to Chapter One which has been sumitted here already.

PHYLES is the definition of experimental. It is written in a point-of-view that I don’t think anyone else has ever used (after taking six months to write just the first draft of the manuscript, I realize that there are probably several good reasons that no one has). Also there’s the tense, instead of being easy, I decided to get cute and write PHYLES in present tense due to the way the story is told. The added fact that I give none of the main characters’ true names, makes this the oddest of all my stories or any novel I’ve read for that matter.

The story revolves around five characters; Capstone, a kleptomaniac young foreign noblewoman; Magistrate, the morally confused leader of a the city state’s constabulary; Red Eye, a drug addict, cross-dressing assassin; Healer, a lying foreign doctor; and Shaman, the oldest living resident of the state, an unknown man who is the most mistrusted person in the city.

The plot is fairly simple, with a few major twists, but over all very basic. I wanted a story that stayed true to who the characters were, and let them shine. I think I did that. The world building isn’t too original, but I have, what I think is, an interesting magic system that ties into the story, setting, characters, and theme nicely. I don’t use the fantasy archetype species, characters, or plot points. There will be no hero’s journey, orcs, or damsel in distress. Also, don’t look too hard for a protagonist, antagonist, hero, or villain, because there aren’t any, as far as I can tell.

The story is a 90,000 word long, first person point of view, fantasy novel, with Shaman narrating while never (the opening and closing chapters aside) allowed to refer to himself as “I”. It is being told as Shaman is watching from the outside as the story unfolds. This means that there is no internal dialog, thus the characters’ personalities, thoughts, and feelings are relayed to the reader through sensory descriptions (you get a lot of the characters talking to themselves, facial expressions, and exaggerated body language). I call the POV First Person Cinematic after Orson Scott Card’s Third Person Cinematic.

The underlining theme of PHYLES is the nature of God (god, or gods); with minor themes addressed being insanity, and leadership. Minor-minor themes brought up, but not addressed are, homosexuality, gender confusion, self sacrifice, fascism, anarchy, and mental disorders.

Impersonal, controversial, disturbing, and layered, PHYLES is book that will leave a lasting impression.

[Silk]

I have to agree with Reaves and Ben - don't write it off as unpublisheable. Once you've got it past us and done whatever else you need to do to get it as good as it needs to be, start sending it off.

I don't see that anything you provided in the summary is a deal-breaker (of course, I'm not an authority on what's saleable). Like they've said, you'll never really know until you start putting it out there. You may want to consider doingsome research - can you find anything else like Phyles? Even stories with only a single aspect that you may consider similar to something in Phyles might be enough that you can pitch it to a publisher based on that element - and what's different. People DO like different. There are also presses out there, especially small presses which can often afford to take more risks, that like experimental work.  So yeah, once you send it's ready, start sending it out. (Better yet, shop it to an agent, who'll have a much better idea what to do with it.) If you're on the fence about whether it's a good fit for them, query anyway. The worst they can say is no.

A way to get a feel for whether or not it's publishable might be to try and publish a chapter or excerpt of the story that stands fairly well on its own in a litmag. I will admit I'm not a hundred per cent certain on this, but I don't believe that it will negatively effect your ability to sell the book later because they deal with different rights. In fact, it may well help.

While you're sitting on your thumbs waiting for responses from publishers and agents, remember don't just have to .. uhh... sit on your thumbs. (Sorry, I'm not in a particularly eloquent mood right now.) You can record a dummy podcast or two, see what your reaction is - and maybe a few other people - whether you can make it a successful podcast, and whether you WANT to, since I'm sure going the Defendi Route involves a beastly amount of work. Heck, you could record a dummy episode and throw it up here so we could give it a shot, if you wanted.

Incidentally, it's not taboo to write books in present tense. Admittedly, I've only seen it once, with a little book called the Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon. You may have heard of it. It won a Hugo award. And a Nebula.

So... put it out there, before you write it off.

[maxonennis]

It's not so much any one thing, but a combination of a lot of small oddities that I think would put off any publisher. Or at least I believe that most publishers would look at it and think that it would be too much work to buy. As I'm going through rewrites in my second draft, I'm trying to make the entire novel a single emotion that will linger with the reader and in doing so I have to write it very impersonal (and I'm not even began to talk about some of the more graphic scenes in the novel). The problem is that I don't think most readers acknowledge if I had done a good job of this because it isn't what they expect from a fantasy, thus I think most would pin it for bad writing = unpublishable (if that's a word).