Hello Readers,
I've finally finished my YA magical realism fantasy novel. It ended up being unexpectedly long at 120,000 words. I considered submitting it to literary agents to try to get it tradpubed, but I did my research, and it is very much not what's considered "hot" in YA fantasy right now (i.e., YA fantasy romance), and it is basically so unique and original that it has no good "comps," so it has no real shot at getting tradpubed. And in all the literary agents guides to query letters, they all say "don't tell me your novel is so original it has no comps," and the question is, well, what if it is? And the answer is, if that's true, then they really don't want it, because the tradpub Big 5 will only buy novels based on the comps. The amazing thing about tradpubworld is that, because it's all based on comps, it rewards conformity and punishes originality, which may explain why I am better suited to be an indie author than to be a tradpub author. I've decided to just do what I know how to do and indiepub it. I'm currently editing it and putting the finishing touches on it, but I plan to have this one hot off the presses before end of year of THIS year (2026)!!! Also, my epic fantasy series-starter novel was rejected by all the literary agents (sigh), so I plan to self-pub that one later this year too, since that was already complete. So, after a long wait, y'all have not one, but two fantasy novels from me to look forward to later this year! Probably both coming out this fall, maybe early fall, possibly late fall/early winter.
--Russell
