After many years of trial and error I’m happy to report The Coldwater Diaries has finally gotten itself a legit publishing deal!

When I first came up with The Coldwater Diaries the original idea was to forge a novel online in ablog format under the hopes that a fan base would grow as the content matured. The idea was after so much time I’d build a large enough fan base to approach a publishing company with a built-in fan-base and incite a publishing deal. That didn’t work.

Around ’08 and ’09 I had quite a bit of content but not the fan base I had hoped for and went through three revolutions of self-publishing my own volumes (two volume ones and a second volume) with the same hope in mind – build a fan base and incite a publishing deal – only added to the mix this time was the idea of writing the third volume on the fly online… this of course would have only worked if I had a large fan base, which I didn’t. So in essence I wrote the third act of my novel online for everyone to see but no one watched.

So in the end I scrapped my work and for two years considered the novelized version of The Coldwater Diaries a wash with minor hopes of giving a stab of serializing short video versions of the novel as I thought the problem was no one read these days when in all actuality the problem was the execution of my ideas and lack of proper PR.

So fast forward to the end of 2010, I’m at the end of my rope and fall back on the old-school route of sending out query letters. After many months passing without a word I figured the jig was up. I didn’t even get any rejects… and then a miracle came along and not one but two PubCo’s requested the first chapter. I complied.

The first company declined to take my work.

The second bit.

And I reeled em in!

This news came to me earlier this morning and I’ve been juiced ever since. It’s not all set in stone yet but the preliminary paperwork was sent to me today and we’ve set a meeting up in their Santa Monica offices for next week. I was even assigned an editor and everything – who I’m sure is going to have a field day with my one volume manuscript – it’s all really a hoot.

Now I’m nowhere near ready to celebrate yet. I was also informed I’d have to cut out about 20k words from my one-volume draft as it’s essentially three books combined into one with a nose-bleed inducing word count of over 100k! I also have to surrender my first two self-published rights along with removing all content I originally posted many years ago (so it’ll be sad to see the memories go away) and worst of all… drum roll… I will NOT be getting any sort of monetary advance for The Coldwater Diaries either

But on the other hand, my work is now backed by a legit publisher and by the end of the summer will be in stores all across America. The current Coldwater volumes are available on Amazon right now, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot when there’s no one around to buy them. Today’s deal means people will actually have access to my book and it will be critiqued and publicized – giving all those who aren’t in the know an opportunity to view my work that I’ve not only slaved over – but have made many moral sacrafices in the pursuit to write.

Hopefully above all the publication of The Coldwater Diaries will lead to a new chapter in my life and close an old one that needed closing more than anything.

I look forward to embarking on the next phase of my life where hopefully I can begin mending some of the breaks I’ve caused and The Coldwater Diaries chronicles in its pages.

Thanks to my family and friends who stuck by me (and even those who fell aside) without you I wouldn’t have had the idea to write in the first place. You’ve all been through hell allowing me into your lives. Hopefully now that I’m on to the next phase I can give you all something to show for it.