Draft Novel for Teenagers

Having decided to follow my late mother Mrs Jennie Hawthorne, in writing a novel for young people, it is pleasing almost to have finished writing the initial draft. The final version  of the novel  should be approximately 60,000 words in length. However publishing a novel these days is far more difficult than seemed to have been the case in mother's time.

Not only are far more people now  writing novels at least in the UK, than was the case  for much of C20 but also many publishers  appear to me to have joined the woke brigade. Thus looking through the shelves at our local Waterstones bookshop for example, there appear to be many  books on sale there because of the gender, race or other characteristics  of the author rather than because the books are simply good reads. I may of course be wrong as the supply of books like those by say John Grisham, may be said to illustrate. However apart from already famous  authors, the position appears to me at least, to be uncertain.

My previous autobiography and recent fiction work, for example, were published through the UK arm of the American self publisher, which seemed happy to publish, though they do charge authors for that privilege. See Shield Crest to which company I am grateful. 

However I am trying to find  publisher for my new almost finished draft novel for young adults entitled the Sussex Container Ship Hijack  but so far unsuccessfully.  A section of chapter 23 draft reads:

Meanwhile two of ISIS crew  members  who were part of the armed group which had taken over the Sussex, having come down to the container deck, started to search for the missing passengers banging loudly upon the each of the metal containers as they went around the whole deck.

Previously the armed ISIS gang had attacked the ship’s bridge with their guns blazing in the stormy night. Captain Nick and his mate had stood no chance and were captured before they even had time to send  out an SOS signal. Shocked rather than actually hurt, they were led away and locked into the captain’s cabin. The ISIS gang then crashed through the cabins of the other crew waving their machine guns and warning of dire consequences if  any orders were disobeyed or if they failed to crew the ship as required. Having captured the ship’s officers and non-ISIS crew, the next task was to deal with the few fare paying passengers on board. Having grabbed the passenger manifest,  Khaled and Ahmed leaving their colleagues on the bridge, first went to the cabins of Francine, John and Henry. Given the machine guns  being brandished,  having previously been noisily fired, none of the students put up any fight and they too were locked into their cabins and told to await further instructions. Meanwhile James and Jennie stunned by the noise from the machine gun fire had emerged from their cabin very bleary eyed and somewhat giddy with sea sickness, given the ongoing  storm. The wind was by then blowing with full hurricane force. “You must be James,” shouted Khaled. “It is you we have come for; praise be  to Allah!” Pushing Jennie back into  her cabin  the door of which he locked, he pulled James to him.   “The next two cabins are empty” cried out Ahmed. “According to the manifest there are supposed to  four others occupying them.” “Where are they?” shouted Khaled to James roughly pulling him across the gangway. “I have no idea” James shouted back. “My wife and I feeling seasick in the storm have been resting inside our cabin. The captain anyway had asked all passengers to stay inside given the expected severity of the storm so where other passengers may be I could not guess.” The two ISIS members then shouting to each other  fired their machine guns again and forced James up to the bridge with them. There they told him who they were, and that ISIS would be demanding a huge ransom from MI6 for him. James then appreciating that ISIS might not yet have appreciated that those from the empty cabins, included his children Emily and Christina, decided to remain silent about that, hoping that Jennie too would cotton on. “We will  now ring the crew alert to muster any crew we have missed so far. 

Possibly the draft would be regarded as insufficiently woke by many publishers or possibly the market for publishing novels is already saturated, meaning that publishers will concentrate on authors of existing best sellers for new works

Who knows whether any of the above is accurate? Nonetheless if any prospective publishers read this blog and are interested  in assisting me with publication of my new draft, please let me know by commenting with relevant info, on this blog posts comment section.