Last week I launched my teaser trailer for the book I’m working on, Trickster’s Wake. The images and compilation of the video was put together by my talented illustrator brother, Luke Marcatili.
Trickster’s Wake is an urban fantasy novel for adults. It’s set in a unique world in which creatures called tricksters roam the wilds, able to shape and bend the earth at will. They can terrorise towns and homesteads with a quake or a sinkhole, but the reasons they cause such harm have been a mystery for hundreds of years.
Evelyn Blackbriar is one of the few people seeking to understand these tricksters as more than just the monsters they appear to be. To find the answers she seeks, she may have to sacrifice everything and everyone that’s important to her – and perhaps her very humanity.
The book isn’t quite finished yet. As this post goes out, it’s currently with a professional editor undergoing a manuscript assessment. I recently finished a very major restructure, and I want to make sure the new plot and character developments are going well. My plan is to take about a week or two off in October to focus on finalising the manuscript – or as much as I can get through in that time – with hopes of sending it out to agents by the end of the year.
So why share the teaser now? Why not wait until it’s finished, and there’s a cover, and a publisher, and a release date?
The idea of the trailer initially was just to share it with agents and publishers as a way of standing out from the thousands of other enquiries they receive. The trailer was an idea intended to convey a sense of the book while taking just one minute of the busy agents’ time. At the same time, Luke was looking for a project to experiment with a new workflow for his illustration, so it was a fortuitous collaboration.
Once we had the video, though, it seemed a shame not to share it around. And part of what agents and publishers are looking for when considering an emerging author is a demonstration of their audience, or their willingness to engage with one. You can guarantee if they’re seriously considering a new author, they will check their website, their Twitter account, their Instagram – whatever platform they happen to use. Big audiences are preferable, but at least some sort of display of life is a minimum.
The full trailer is up the top. If you haven’t watched it yet, now’s as good a time as any! I hope you enjoy it. If you do, let me know. And even better, sign up to the newsletter in the footer below so you’ll hear the latest.