After speaking to people involved in writing on a writers forum, I have decided not to go with the offer of publication, because as one of them put it, “you might get 60% of the royalties from sales, but 60% of nothing is still nothing.” So I have been encouraged to hold out for a better publisher, who will push my book more. Now that I have rationalised all this, I am feeling a lot better about it, and I have reasoned that I am now getting some interest in my novel, so perhaps somebody will bite. I’ve also just started sending queries directly to publishers. All this time I thought that you couldn’t as they all say “no unsolicited submissions”, which I took as meaning no queries. It doesn’t, you can still query a sample of your work, just don’t submit the full manuscript unless they ask for it. There is a silver lining to this however, as I have improved my novel and the query over the last couple of years to a point that people are taking notice. So I am now submitting something to publishers which stands a far better chance.
On the music side, I just heard the mixes for three of the tracks which we did in the studio. They were End Of The Line, Boogie Woogie and Paper Cuts. All not bad, but the instruments all need to be turned up on all the songs and we need to hear more of the drums and bass. The vocal are at a good level, but nothing else seems to be. None of the instruments are distinct either and all in all it just needs to be more punky and edgy.