Since my John Dunn story is my longest book, it is logical that it will take me longer to make revisions. A 123,000 word manuscript looms large on revisions. It was over 124,000 words at first, but after two rounds of revisions, it has dropped to 123,000 words. I don't suppose it will drop below that, but who knows? It might. Sometimes I take out entire paragraphs, but sometimes I add paragraphs, too. But sometimes it's a sentence or just a single word that needs changing, deleting, or adding.
And I'll probably have to give it another two or three passes at least. But even so I've begun soliciting agents. I figure in the time that it will take for an agent to respond, I'll have time to make those two or three passes to polish up the MS. From what I already know, agents take anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks, to a couple months to respond to queries. Or they'll never respond.
But I'm hoping that since it's historical fiction, the John Dunn story will attract more agents than thriller suspense stories, which is what my first three books were. The Victorian setting is a plus as well. And the John Dunn story has another thing going for it. The characters are mostly British, the story takes place in a British colony, and it involves a major event in British history. Those elements give me two countries of agents to query. American agents and agents in the UK. In fact, UK publishers are probably more likely to publish a story like this. There have been two books published about John Dunn already, both by UK publishers. But those were published a long time ago, and are out of print now. So who knows? We'll see.
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