Weekly Roundup Vol. 10
Ten week Anniversary! Woo...
Woo… Yes, welcome to my tenth weekly roundup! Thank you for sticking with me for that long, or if you joined at any point along the way, thank you for reading this! Where do the weeks go, eh? Writing this post, I enjoyed looking back at the archive of roundups, seeing the last ten weeks of my life distilled to titles and thumbnails. Anyway, I’m waffling as I was once again ill throughout this week, didn’t get up to as much as last week's visit to see Monet and some Ghosts. So, this’ll be a short one. (‘Phew!’ I hear you cry.) Still, I got some things done sitting here at my laptop, mostly a lot of one thing:
Writing!
Yes, you guessed it. It was great to have the time to dedicate hours of every day to writing. I’m almost at 80,000 words now on my third full-length novel, and it’s going to be full-length; that 80,000 is only the fourteen short stories in between the spine of the book. The crystal short story that I’ve been going on about for *checks my own archive* almost two months???? is about to leave Roman Britain. (It was October first, my second roundup, when I first mentioned it.)
I wrote in depth about the London Mithraeum, trying to bring together all the known rituals and beliefs and imagery of the mystery cult, and all the known artefacts found on the site, into one cohesive description and event. I’m going to try and get it somewhat fact-checked by someone ‘in the know’ - I like my historical fantasy to be as authentic as possible. And now the crystal’s about to visit Richborough before moving onto the continent where I’ll speed up the journey a bit, or a lot. I visited Richborough mid-October so I’m looking forward to moulding what I’ve seen and learnt into something readable, I hope.
To query, or not to query?
That is the question Shakespeare would’ve had to ask if he’d been writing now. But yes, I did query a literary agent this week, for the first time in a while. I knew they’d be open for a small window so I bit the bullet.
My first novel is being read over again, but I thought I’d shoot my shot (using a lot of gun metaphors here, not intentional), instead reworking my query letter and synopsis with advice I’d picked up from authors and other agents online or in person throughout this year. One very kind author who dedicated a post to query letters is - subscribe to her Substack!
I also binge-watched ’s YouTube channel yesterday, mainly for the videos relayed to querying, but to soak up everything really. He hasn’t uploaded in a long while, but the videos are definitely worth checking out to get an insight into an authorly process and mindset, and have some laughs.
This one may have been a highlight.
This week’s books
This segment showcases the new additions to my research and fiction collections. Despite not really getting out, some new books still floated my way courtesy of my mum.
My two favourite(?) empires, or at least the two I write about the most. When my short story does get to Rome, that little book will be useful in visualising how the place used to look. And as the pharaohs say (or was it Depeche Mode), you just can’t get enough of Ancient Egyptian art and history. The book does have timelines, photos, drawings, reconstructions and plans from all over so I’ll be poring over that eventually either for the next stops on the crystal’s long journey, or for my Watchers screenplay that I mentioned in this week's Writing Journey post.
Thanks for reading! Let me know how your week went, if you feel like it.
Cheers,
Harvey