In the first half of 2016, I wrote a book called Shuckr about a time-traveling oyster bar in NYC. It was a fun, but somewhat angsty book about a disgruntled and very drunk thirty-year-old guy who finds his way into the secret bar one night after a bender.
I worked hard on it, and managed to secure an agent for it! It was exciting and we signed on the morning of the election.
We were slow after that, but I got some notes and rewrote it, finally getting a new draft to my agent in the spring of 2017. But both of us fell a bit behind, lost steam, etc. etc.
Push ahead to the summer of 2018. I picked the book again, shared it with an old friend, and began to feel strongly that the book didn't fit anymore. It was a pre-election book about a dude who was pretty much an asshole and it felt off. Most importantly, I wasn't excited about it.
And so, in August, I decided to do a brand new thing. I started over from scratch. I decided to re-write the entire book, but this time with a female protagonist to see where it would go. And lo-and-behold it started pouring out. I wrote a rough draft in about two weeks, and then over the last few months I added more and more detail, flushed out the plot and the language, and generally tightened it up.
Which all means, that I now have a brand new rough draft! Instead of Shuckr, the book is now called The Oyster Queen, and boy is it a hell of a ride. There's a time-traveling bar, a lesbian love story, and the ghost of David Bowie. Just to get us started.
Here's my working cover. I'm going to have a few proofs made to share it with a few friends, and then make some decisions about how I'd like to get it out to the public.
It's been a journey, but I am so damn excited about this book I can hardly contain myself.