On March 10, I will present my novel, OurGlass, to my group of peers, industry professionals, Red River College instructors, and members of my family. It is an accomplishment that has been a long time coming, and it has created a feeling of personal achievement that I have never felt before. While it has been tough at times to visualize this project to its completion, I am very glad that I chose to write a novel for my Independent Professional Project.

I am a writer. I love the creative process. I love the feeling of crafting events and visualizing situations and worlds outside my own. OurGlass posed a particularly difficult challenge in that it is a novel in the science-fantasy genre, a genre I never thought to consider, much less complete an entire novel for. The story itself lent to the genre. That is just how it turned out.

OurGlass exists as a finished manuscript at 120 pages on a 8″ X 11.5″ formatted data file. For the remainder of 2011, I will enter the marketing phase of this project and work at finding a publisher for OurGlass. This process may involve using the expertise and connections that an agent has to offer, or I may go it alone. I have created this mock-up cover of how I think the novel might look.

During my final edit, I read OurGlass from front to back. I can be very critical of books (especially since I’ve attended CreComm), and I surprised myself in that I actually liked my story. This may sound self-serving, but after writing a novel for an entire year (editing, fixing grammatical errors, re-edits, re-consideration of certain events), I was growing tired of reading OurGlass in small, unfinished sections as it progressed forward.

I may choose to print copies of OurGlass in the latter half of 2011 before any official launch. In the event that I do, stay tuned to my Twitter feed. I will advise you to the time and place where this event will take place.

Cheers, and thanks for listening.