When I first started what would become “The Twelve Cataclysms” I had a simple goal: to finish a novel in the month of November. Yep, it’s a NANOWRIMO baby. Astoundingly – to me, at least – I managed to complete it. The rough draft, at least.

Over the next six months, I edited, got a few Beta Readers involved, found an artist to do the cover, and reworked it again and again. Then, come June 2014, I finally published it through Amazon.com. I sold some books, but nowhere near the quantity that I had hoped for. With the publication of “Escape from the Spotlight,” I decided that self-publishing wasn’t really my thing. While it has been a remarkably successful platform for some people, it just doesn’t quite fit with me and my goals. And that is fine. Not everyone can match everything.

After a whole lot of soul-searching and creative consideration, I decided to pull “The Twelve Cataclysms” from Amazon. That done, I got a red pen and started a read-through of the manuscript. It got bloody. Like freshly-butchered lamb bloody. Like crime-scene massacre bloody. Like a feeding frenzy of month-starved vampires bloody.

How many drafts had I done before this? <facepalm>

One good thing to come from this COVID-19 debacle is that I finally finished the edits to this book. I addressed a whole lot that really, desperately needed attention. The end results are satisfying. In fact there was one chapter that had been weighing on my mind for months. Funny how that can happen. But it’s fully edited now!

So I’ve started the next step: finding an agent. If anyone out there is an agent or knows of one who is looking for the following, let me know!

Sales Pitch
The Twelve Cataclysms weaves the fantasy worldbuilding of Patrick Rothfuss with the complex characters that one would expect from Neil Gaiman in a story whose core is the desperate lengths a single mother will go for her children.

Summary
Starting with a Kurosawa-esque “Rashomon” trial of a burglar caught in the act, “The Twelve Cataclysms” explores the consequences of an accident so total that it threatens everyone in all Nine Realms. At the heart of this fantasy novel is a class divide between the haves and have-nots, and how, despite artifices of society, none are free from the impending ruin of the Twelve Cataclysms.

The Queen has spoken.