Just a few minutes ago, I got an email from Angry Robot regarding my submission last December – Dieu et mon Droit, a novel I completed ten years ago and have picked and prodded for many years, going through edit after edit yet still not being totally happy with it until last year when I heard about the Angry Robot Open Doors. So, after spending several months updating the text, I sent it and waited.

Well, I certainly didn’t expect them to take it – what I was ideally looking for was some idea of how it could be improved, some direction. Their response was short and sweet:

Thank you for sending us “Dieu et Mon Droit”. Thanks also for your patience as we read through all the submissions.

We have now looked at your opening chapters, and while we appreciated the chance to read them, the piece is, unfortunately, not for us. In particular we felt the dialogue could use work, as it reads as too artificial, not natural enough.

We wish you the very best of luck with this, and hope you will be able to find a home for it elsewhere.

Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Angry Robot

 

Meh, I am cool with that but I was really hoping for something a bit more substantial in terms of feedback here. Last year represented the most substantial rewrite. I removed a character, condensed a couple more and removed in all about 10-15,000 words of text. I suppose if it is not their sort of thing then they wouldn’t have finished it, so this is fair comment. As for the dialogue, this leaves me with a few questions that I will need to ponder on. It is set in the future, but it is after all a medieval novel so I wrote the dialogue in a style to make it feel like a period piece.

Still, I have DNF and my as-yet untitled Romans book to work on. This will be shelved but I do not know for how long. Self-publishing may eventually be an option… but I think that may not go ahead until I have really knuckled down and am truly happy with the draft.