So, after receving several comments, I have decided to rename my novel Deadlines Are Murder. The deadlines refer to the main character, Samantha’s, deadline to finish re-writing her novel and start on a second one; her soon to be ex-husband Rick’s deadline to be published or perish in the world of academia and the deadline to solve the the murder before another one or more occurs.

I have sent my novel off to the Malice Domestic writing contest and the Mystery Writer’s of America First Crime Novel contest. If nothing else, I hope to get some good comments from the judge or judges in these two contests. While I would love to win something or even be a runner-up for something, my expectations are tempered so that I’m not disappointed when I don’t win. I’m still in the early stages of this process.

In mid-January I’ll start sending out queries to agents. I have a list ready to go and will be using AgentTracker to track my queries and we’ll see how this progresses. I’m not the fence about agents vs. small presses vs. self-publishing and have decided to start with agent queries to see how that goes while investigating small presses. Small presses tend not to work with agents but with authors directly, which is good. I had always thought that I would be looking for an agent so I’m struggling with how to change my plans. Something I’ll work on in the New Year as one of my resolutions.