This is a big week, dreamers. Possibly my biggest week since I first put pen to paper, so to speak. This week, I will be sending out my first queries for Pioneers. Months ago, when I decided this would be the year, I was terrified. Now, I’d say I’m more excited. It’s a pivotal moment in my writing career; one that will likely consume a great deal of my time and energy over the coming year. But I’ve never felt more ready than I do now. With that said, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

Querying Pioneers

And here we go.

Midway through last week, I finished my “interiority sweep” of Pioneers. Over the course of that grueling work, I tried to sharpen character voice, with the intent of making sure every part of the story was clearly told by one of the characters. The result was a much deeper, more human story. It felt like what this story had been trying to be from the start. It felt right.

Over the weekend, I made my final editing pass. I focused primarily on passages I’d made major alterations to, as I’d made a full editing pass over the course of the sweep, tightening sentences and shaving down the count. Before I began, the word count sat just south of 119k. After the sweep, I’m sitting comfortably south of 115k, and find myself with a much more impactful story. I’ve learned a lot over the past year. And I’m eager to share it with the world.

I’ve done a lot of hard work over the past several months. I’ve all but rewritten this book, wrote and sharpened my query letter, done my due diligence on sci-fi literary agents. And now, the moment of truth.

As of this writing, I’ve submitted my first wave of queries.

My current plan is to submit queries in waves, making adjustments to my query materials and manuscript after each one. I’m neither narcissistic nor deluded enough to believe any of the first rounds will lead to an offer of representation. Or the second. Or probably the third, either. If one of the second round queries led to a full request, I’d call that a victory. If one of the first did, I’d call that an unqualified success. The query process can take years. It can take hundreds of query letters to find an agent. But I’m in this until the end of the line. I’ll get better with each “no”, and I only need one “yes”. However long it takes, I’ll get that “yes”.

Regardless of how this goes, or how long it takes, I’m grateful. And I’d like to take a moment to thank all the people who helped me make it even this far. My editor, Melissa. My friend Sara, who’s my top beta reader and biggest fan. All the supportive friends and fellow writers who read this story and helped me along my way. My beloved partner, who has listened very patiently over the years as I’ve prattled on about agriculture, dinosaurs, and solar sail equations. And my mother, who has never stopped believing in me, though she refused to read this story because it sounded “too scary”.

It takes one person to tell a story. But to write a book, you need a small army of supporters, cheering you on at every turn, pushing you forward when you get discouraged. I couldn’t have made it this far alone. And when I do get that one, distant, inevitable “yes”, I have a lot of people to thank for it.

What’s Next

So I wrote a book, and now I’m querying it. Yay. Moving on…

One of the many positive side-effects of my query prep over the past few months is it’s made me love Pioneers again. I’d missed this. I’d missed feeling proud of the thing I did. And for the first time since I started Pioneers, it’s left me eager to move forward with this series of novels.

Over the past year my overall plan for these stories has changed a lot. Not in the overall direction, but rather in the richness and details along the way. Over the past few days, my sketches have increasingly featured characters from Pioneers, as I’ve explored their lives after the story ended. It’s helped me begin to do something I’d had trouble doing after finishing the first draft: bridge the gap between Pioneers and the next installment in the series.

Though I do plan to return to short fiction in the coming weeks, I can feel the stirrings of wanting to press forward. Most likely I’ll reopen my notes on the next installment, which are no doubt a complete mess. I’ll revise and expand, and likely begin test writings next month at some point. With any luck, I’ll finally feel ready to forge ahead, and the story of Randall Holmes will continue.

Short Fiction

With querying in progress, Pioneers is finally in my rearview (for now). And just in time for me to enjoy Short Fiction Month.

I have a lot of outstanding projects, several of which I still find intriguing. So early this week I plan to write around, see if anything catches. With any luck, I’ll have another short fiction manuscript ready to go by the end of the week.

New Content

Now that I’m finished with Pioneers, I’m also going to dive back into my platform, which means new posts. This week, I plan to put up several posts about my querying journey: how far I’ve come, what lies ahead, and what comes after that. I’m also planning to resume my weekly “Flash Fiction Friday” posts, and will have a shiny new Thursday feature this week. So keep reading, and dare to dream. – MK