This year did not go quite like I planned. In another universe, I would have gone on to having two panels at the Cape Town Comic Con and would have participated in two prestigious South African book festivals. This was supposed to be my year. I won’t lie. I was salty as all hell about how my dreams imploded after my YA SF novel Sing down the Stars won gold in the Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature. Let’s not even discuss my long-anticipated trip to the US – a bucket-list item I had long saved up for. 

You know what they say about wishes and horses… Or should I rather make an analogy about lemons and lemonade stands? 

One good thing that came out of all of this was that I landed an agent, and it was one of those rare occasions where the agent came looking for me rather than the other way around. After I pinched myself to see whether I was dreaming, I did my due diligence to check whether the agency was legit. And we’re going from there. 

Yes, it is a bit of a ‘dream come true’ scenario for any author, and not one that I ever expected to happen, considering that much like many other un-agented authors, I’d been submitting to agents for years. My only advice to authors who are still looking for agents is this: 

No agent is better than a bad agent. While chances are you and your agent are not ever going to be bosom buddies (don’t see it as anything but a business arrangement), you *do* need to get on with each other. Your agent needs to give a damn about your writing, where you can strike the balance between creating works that may be commercially successful while also maintaining your creative integrity. It’s a fine, fine line, I know. It’s no use running with an agent who isn’t as invested in your writing as you are. Then you are better off self-publishing. And for the love of dog, please, please, please do a background check on the person before you sign any agreements. It’s better to wait for the right agent than end up sitting in a bad situation. 

How to land an agent, you might ask? Keep writing, keep submitting. I didn’t wait for an agent to sell my work – I got out there and submitted my writing to as many open subs calls and competitions I could find. I kept writing, kept submitting – yes, I repeat that like a mantra. For years I had near misses, and then eventually I started making a sale here, a sale there. Got nominated for a short story prize here, finally won awards for novels and novellas there. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t gotten over my fear of rejection and submitted the writing. And that’s what got me noticed. I am playing the long game, and I am very, very patient and committed to this path. 

And also, landing an agent is just that luck of the draw, of being in the right place at the right time. My agent is currently building her list of African speculative fiction authors, and I fit the bill. 

Finding an agent is that delicate balance between sheer dumb luck and the qualities an agent believes they can sell. So don’t give up. I follow that school of thought that describes authors as eternal gamblers. We might not write that best-selling, breakout novel this year, but maybe our current WiP is The Thing. And if it’s not… then maybe the next one is… 

While some might think I’ve gone dark after my prize-winning novel of 2019, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it was while my co-author and fellow prize-winner Toby Bennett and I were chilling out after the awards ceremony that we hatched the plot for our current project. We’ve known each other for years, and initially when we both figured out we were finalists, I’d said to him: “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we both ended up winning? At least we could have someone to stand in a corner with and chat at the awards ceremony…” 

It was hilarious. 

Not only are we excellent friends, but it turns out that we write well together, with each of us complementing the other. Our epic fantasy trilogy has mutated into a four-book series, which we are now officially halfway through with writing. The Splintered Fool has all the elements we love, including pirates, mummies, trickster gods, elves, barbarians…oh, and did I say dragons? And mammoths… I can go on. It sounds crazy if described in brief, I know, but we both decided that above all else we wanted to have fun with our writing. And that’s what we’re doing. Besides, this year has been awful. We needed something to spark joy in our lives. 

Toby sums it up best when he says, “I think most writers would agree that writing can often be a lonely proposition, particularly when it comes to longer works. It is very easy to turn inward and to loose your way in a labyrinth of your own creation. 

“You will often have no idea what works and what doesn’t until you release your work and allow others into your world. But having a writing partner changes all that! You get a response in real time and better yet all the fun of seeing your story through a new set of eyes, before its shape is set. 

“You also have someone to show off to! Collaborative writing is probably the closest a writer will get to jamming with another artist, and what’s not to like about that?” 

Toby and I are both avid gamers, with an abiding love particularly for role-playing games, so I think this as definitely a factor that helped our collaboration. 

He adds, “The process of plotting and writing scenes has felt more like a good role-playing session than work… though of course this can be a problem too since I often find myself chomping at the bit to find out what happens next in the story. In the end it’s just great to play with the ideas that Nerine and I come up with – some of the dialogue has been a reward in itself.” 

Part of the enjoyment of the process is also seeing how the story gains a life of its own, where we each bring in elements that we love. For me, a highlight has been writing in the bestiary of critters I’ve always threatened to write, like mammoths, terror birds and ambulocetus. Toby’s handle on characterisation through dialogue is astounding, whereas I’ll come in after with layering of detail. While we each have our characters, we’ve reached the point in the story where we seamlessly shift between writing either of them, so that it’s often difficult for me to tell where Toby leaves off and I pick up. 

Of course in our planning, we find that we’ve left threads that we can pick up later, so the true challenge is to know where to stop – and we’ve planned a suitably catastrophic yet satisfying ending for book four. And we *hope* that it’s book four and not book five, but that is always subject to change. [grins] So while 2020 hasn’t exactly been our year, we’ve carved something out of it that has so far given hours of pleasure, and it is my hope that 2021 will see some sort of good news about The Splintered Fool series. If you’ve enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean, with a side order of The Mummy by way of Assassin’s Creed and Tomb Raider, and maybe a dash of Vikings… 

Here be dragons, is all I’m saying… 

Find out more about Nerine Dorman’s writing here: http://nerinedorman.blogspot.com/p/about-my-stories.html, follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nerinedorman or sign up for her newsletter: http://eepurl.com/JoPUv