Entering Adventure

Tomorrow I'm going to the library to search for these books.

In all of my searching for agents and editors (although honestly, I've only really looked at agents), I had constrained myself to the Christian market. The idea of going into the secular world scared the tar out of me. It still kind of does, if I'm honest with myself. Although, for some reason, I've never actually thought that the Christian market was where my books were meant to land.

Let's look at things. There's the secular market, where you have, well, everything. Then there's the Christian market. It's where everything even remotely hinting at God gets thrown. Books there tend to wither and die. They're allegorical and annoying. Not that allegory is wrong. It's just wrong for me. And boring. Take Ted Dekker's Color series (Red, Black, White and Green). I read through the first three and knew all of the plot twists that were going to happen halfway through the first book. It made the reading of the other two to be irritating. There wasn't any surprise or suspense. I know he can write it, because Adam was pretty dang good.

All of this to say that my books are not allegorical. I sat back while talking with my mom and realized that the people I'm attempting to emulate (C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien), are not confined to the Christian market. In fact, when you walk into a book store and search for Narnia, it's in the children section while Lord of the Rings sits in the Fantasy section. These two titans of writing have straddled the line between the Christian and secular world.

I wish to do the same.

I guess that means that I'm heading toward where I think I need to be. The research begins and hopefully (fingers crossed), I'll be sending out proposals within the next month.

In the meantime, anyone reading this - do you pitch a series differently from a one book, stand alone novel? Seeing as I'm technically only sending the first book in my series to people for publishing, I am pitching the whole five-book series. Is that done differently? Do I need to be sure to mention it in a query letter? Or am I pitching the whole story arc itself?

Happy writing!

Currently Reading: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Currently [Re]Writing: Unity
Currently Listening to: "Without You" by David Guetta feat. Usher