It’s been several months since I’ve regularly posted to the blog, and there’s a (semi) good reason for that. Regular readers will know that I began actively querying The Curse Merchant back in February. For a while I recounted the ups and downs of this Agent Safari for everyone to follow along, until I ran across some sage wisdom from one literary agent in particular. Turns out, agents aren’t terribly impressed with authors who detail the results of their querying, for a couple reasons. The first of which is that knowing another agent has passed on your manuscript calls into question “why did they pass?” Which encourages a pass in turn. The second reason is simple… it’s not a terribly professional thing to do.

Fair enough.

I reacted to this revelation with equal parts gratitude and panic, the net result of which was a basic information lock-down on this blog. For that, I apologize.

But now, I feel free to announce that I am no longer actively querying The Curse Merchant. I haven’t given up on it, mind you. Far from it. And next week, I hope to make an announcement regarding poor old Dorian Lake. But for this week, I’d like to discuss Silence.

In August, I ended the pre-writing phase of my next project and began putting words down to (virtual) paper. What’s the new project you might ask? What’s the genre? What’s the working title? You might well ask.

And I won’t tell you.

Hell, I won’t even tell my wife. Why? Because I’ve discovered a truth to my personality as a writer. I like to call it Hydrostatic Storytelling Pressure. It’s the “need” to tell a story that often propels me forward. I’ve discovered in the past that when I outline a story for someone else, even briefly, it relieves part of that pressure, which in turn robs me of my forward momentum.

This perhaps overstates the situation somewhat, but for this novel I want to try keeping it completely under wraps until the first draft is complete. Thus, I intend not to tell anyone the working title, what it’s about, or even what genre it is. Thusfar the only one who knows is my five-year-old, because he loves having that little secret no one else knows. Plus, I’m very certain he doesn’t remember anyway. Hopefully this experiment will prove that Silence is Golden.

So, what do you think as a reader? Does the mystery of the thing make you hungrier to read a pending release? Or do you prefer to be fed snippets of your favorite author’s next book ahead of its release?