Hello, dreamers. This is it. As of today, I’m officially a querying writer. I’ve sent off my first round of ten queries on this manuscript. This morning, years of work, months of tireless writing and rewriting and rethinking and prepping and critiquing and re-prepping, two pitch contests, hours and hours of research, all culminated in a handful of emails and submissions on QueryTracker. I’ve done it. My first milestone has been cleared.

Writers often refer to the querying process as the “query trenches”. The term harkens back to the grueling trench warfare of World War I, because querying is known to be a long, brutal process. There are steps forward and steps back, and it can be mentally and emotionally draining. But though I use the term frequently, I don’t think of my querying journey as being in “the trenches”.

For some time now, I’ve thought of it simply as “The Mission”.

Anyone who knows anything about me will know how passionate I am about space travel. To me, querying isn’t trench warfare; it’s a space mission. A launch, a long voyage, setbacks and emergencies, contingencies and re-thinking, all bound for a distant world where the crew hopes to see something they’ve never seen before.

From the moment I began writing, traditionally publishing a novel has been my overarching goal. I’ve spent years of my life working toward it. There have been plenty of setbacks, from moments of self-doubt to the pandemic, falling in love, building a family, a home. But more than anything, the biggest hurdle has been my belief, whether I admitted it or not, that I couldn’t really do it. That belief wasn’t enough to stop me; nothing will stop me from working toward a goal. But, looking back, I realize it was enough to prevent me from taking the necessary steps forward.

All of that began to change late last year. It started almost a year ago around this time, really. After finally taking some steps forward, last year on New Years Eve I made one major New Years Resolution: that this would be the year I’d start querying my novel.

As of this morning, on that note, mission accomplished. But while that mission has ended, a new mission has begun. It’ll take a while to get there. As I say in many of my stories, nothing happens fast in space. But I’m in it for the long haul. I’m committed to the mission. And I know I’ll get there. So to all my readers who’ve been with me through this ordeal, thank you for your support. I’m doing this for you as much as myself. So by all means read on, and dare to dream. – MK