The Castle Aaaaaaaaggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I have discovered why this message was so cryptic, and felt compelled to share it with you. Joseph of Aramathea was under a strict word count limit from the clue publishers in charge of the Holy Grail. Now far be it for me to complain about the keepers of the grail making rules, I’m just saying sometimes their rules led to a poorer communication than would have been possible without such rules. If Joseph of Aramathea had instead been permitted to describe where the castle Aaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhhhhh was, then the Knights of the round table would not have had to traipse every bog in Scotland looking for it. CONFLUENCE is too long… long enough no agent will probably ever be willing to look at it. It’s bitter medicine, but I look at it like an anti-biotic… some evil medicines are just necessary, and I thank the doctor, Colleen Gleason (the groovy author I met through my hot neighbor) for prescribing it, because my google search gave me ball parks ALL concentrating on 90L-100K for a first author ‘ideal’ and 120K for about the upper bound. I believe it is possible to strategize and find a few agents who will stretch to 150K, but above that, I just don’t see it happening. So I am cutting. I managed to cut 1100 words from chapter 1 without a lot of pain and no ‘content loss’ unless you are a person who sort of digs backstory of various characters and thought processes (which I am, or I wouldn’t have written it, but I don’t think it hurts the STORY). That times 35 chapters puts me clear down to 170K, making me think one or two subplots might throw me in the ball park. Still, I have to confess to hoping for such success with this that they request the Unabridged version and the public cries out that they should have just wanted the whole thing to begin with… Hey, a girl can dream…