Chase Gamwell

Category: Writing

  • Pacing Edits

    I’ve finally completed another edit of Over the Edge. With it, the book feels more final than it ever has before. Pacing in the first few chapters should be a lot more brisk, pushing the story forward with no major breaks in the action throughout the entire piece. Though I…

  • Dusting Off

    I was going to write something extremely bitter, but after a night of rest and a fresh start (on a Friday, no less), I’m going to write something different. Yesterday, I got a personalized rejection from an agent. Despite being the 12th consecutive rejection for my mystery novel (yes, I’m…

  • Current/Future WIP pages

    Added page links at the top for my current and future WIPs. Check them out and let me know what you think!

  • Good Enough

    I was going through my Twitter feed and noticed that one of the agents I follow published query statistics for 2015. I don’t remember the exact number of submissions the agent got, but it was somewhere near 3500. I do remember how many offers of representation were made: nine. Doing…

  • Waiting is the hardest part…

    At this point, I’ve started sending out queries for Over the Edge. After working super hard on the letter and making sure that the manuscript is where it needs to be, I simply have to wait for responses. Rejections are already trickling in, but I haven’t received anything even close…

  • Thoughts on the Query Process

    With Over the Edge done, I’ve started putting together query materials. So far, I have managed to write (what I consider to be) a competent query letter, devise a single page synopsis of the novel, and sequester samples of the manuscript to include with the query – all pretty standard stuff. But…

  • Discovering Pine Falls

    My mystery novel, Over the Edge, is set in a fictional town six hours north of New York City. The original idea for Pine Falls came from a psychological science fiction short story that I wrote, but in that story, it is barely a shadow of the hamlet it is…

  • Almost There

    Right now, my mystery novel is eclipsing most other things I’d want to talk about on this blog.  With the MS out for beta reading and constant editing, pretty much all I think about is the end result – a published Novel. I’m feeling pretty good about how tight the…

  • Adventures in Editing

    Back in November, I took part in National Novel Writing Month. Between November 4th and the end of the month, I managed to put a 66k word mystery novel to paper. The title of the work eventually became An Unassuming Fall and after two edits, sat at a final word…

  • The New Year (in writing)

    I sat down with a plan to write something profound about 2016, but so much has already happened in the past few days that I’m already feeling overwhelmed. On the first, I moved to a new place with my wife and pets. It’s twice as big as the one we…