My Publishing Journey

[Look, this whole thing is awful, and I’m not going to leave a lot of notes, but here it is. Make fun of me!]

Nyx, Sagan, Loogan, John, Koa [yep, that’s 5 Main Characters right there. DON’T DO THIS]—not one of them can ever go home again. In the Plainslands, an ancient law forces adolescents, called Penances, into exile. For some it’s a chance.  For others it’s a sentence.  Regardless, it’s mandatory and they’ve been chosen.  

Nyx, 18, stares upon the shores of her hometown.  She has wanted the water to consume her and her troubles her whole life.   But, today, a ship waits and she’s putting the floating shantytown behind her.  John, 15, scoffs as a soldier forces him forward with a spear—it’s not just the infernal walk to the Desertlands that’s slowing him, but it’s also that the King that John needs to punch is in the other direction.  Sagan, 17, can’t breathe, can’t move his limp hands away from the knife in his mother’s chest until rage rips him away.  But, he’s falsely convicted of her murder and sentenced to exile.  He’ll have to shelve his craving for vengeance to survive.  Loogan, 16, winks at the most perfect man there is in the mirror.  He knows that his mother, the Lady of Cliffstep, would never send that beauty away to the Mountainlands because of some law.  Koa, 17, wells with excitement as he streaks out of the orphanage with his watercat, Mei-Mei, beside him.  He looks up, eager to reach the Riverlands—the place where Koa can find peace. 

They all wander towards their futures.  But, if history is to be trusted, only three of them will survive.  

THE SUN SETS OVER WANDERERS is Epic Fantasy complete at 69,000 words [yeah, you read that right, 70k “epic” fantasy], and the first in an outlined series. [There were 7 of these…]

Rightfully, this got 0 requests and a whole lot of rejections. But one agent was kind enough to point me toward some forums and encouraged me to keep going. It was in those forums I would eventually meet Sunyi Dean.

Blessed with rare magic, seventeen-year-old Kimbra has always known her conscription would come. Never mind her skill as a blacksmith or her religious objection to murder, her fire magic is required by the war effort and refusing means hanging for treason. But participating in the violence comes with its own risk: eternal damnation by her vengeful goddess. So when Kimbra’s summons come, she makes a vow. She’ll do her mandatory years, but she won’t damn herself by killing. [With a lot of years of hindsight, I think I could’ve tightened this up a lot.]

Then Kimbra’s unit is ordered to assassinate an enemy. [This looks good if you’re studying queries, but agents skim, and the context from above is easily lost. I should’ve been more specific about why this felt personal.] In control of a monstrous two-ton bear with flaming claws, this specific enemy has the ability to destroy Kimbra’s home and everyone she loves. [Unclear why/how] Without her magic to fight the bear, her unit is doomed to fail and her people will be lost. So, sword aflame [wait, what, why is her sword on fire?], Kimbra charges through war-torn countryside in pursuit.

But the path before her is muddy with blood, treason, and secrets. [Melodramatic] As the violence grows around her and her actions wax less and less pious, Kimbra will question her loyalties to goddess, her unit, and her people. All as she trudges the path to damnation.

WARKIND is young adult fantasy complete at 94,000 words. It has the emotional undercurrents of Victoria Aveyard’s RED QUEEN and Peirce Brown’s RED RISING, set in a monstrous world similar to FINAL FANTASY XV.

So, ironically, WARKIND is pretty similar to SEVEN RECIPES but there’s some important differences. I got much better at writing, especially starting in the right place, by the time I got to SEVEN, and with Warkind, I wrote an adult story within the confines of YA.

This query didn’t get a lot of requests, and at the time, I was pretty surprised. I thought it was strong. The reality was the first 10 pages were BAD and even if the query was okayish, they weren’t right for YA or ready to be published.

A DILIGENT’S SWORD is Adult LGBTQ+ Fantasy complete at 118,000 words. It is dual-POV, following an ace/aro man and a pan woman, and it will appeal to fans of THE RUIN OF KINGS and A NATURAL HISTORY OF DRAGONS. [Query trends change! This was about the time that metadata-in-the-front, bio-in-the-back became popular.]

Lord Adigun Tenderweln is bound by his title’s obligations: suffer indoctrination sermons at church, marry though he is aromantic, and abandon academia’s libraries for imperial bureaucracy. [Too listy to start, bad past me. In my defense, Absolute Write had just bitten the dust.] But Adigun won’t be so easily held. Adigun can legally renounce his title when he defends his dissertation to become a Diligent, a sword-wielding academic tasked with defending knowledge and empire—but suddenly his new wristwatch is against him. [cringe] In only weeks, Adigun’s brother will wed the empress and bequeath his lands to Adigun, forever dooming him to the humdrum of high society.

When Adigun unearths evidence that dragons evolved into other reptiles, he rushes to defend his dissertation. But the head Diligent fails Adigun and accuses him of falsifying the fossil record to blaspheme the church with his theory of evolution, disbarring him from academia. Enraged by the censorship and desperate to prove his innocence, Adigun vows to ensure the fossil record’s validity at the dig site in the empire’s wilds and steals credentials to do so. [this paragraph is a confusing mess]

On the run for unlawfully impersonating a Diligent, Adigun hires his mercenary cousin, Sagan, and her enby partner, unfaithfully promising them riches if they defend his journey to the dig site. But the empire is aware of his fraud and orders their greatest hunters to pursue him. If Adigun is going to prove his work’s legitimacy and earn a position as a Diligent despite his crimes, he’ll have to survive the chase that ensues, the unexpected truths evolution reveals, and the wild’s distinct lack of civility—all as Sagan’s suspicions and the price on his head grow.

So, I think my big flaw here was that I was like “I’m writing adult now; my query can be complicated!” and it just can’t. This query probably did me just as many injustices as my slow first chapter–because Adult can start slower, right? …right?

I should’ve realized that my twitter pitches, which were focused on Fantasy + PhD + Dragons, were getting attention because of trends/tropes and that my query was getting rejected because of bad writing. But I wasn’t really there yet.

Then Sunyi introduced me to a guy named Wayne Santos. If you haven’t read Wayne’s books, you absolutely should. Wayne asked me why I wrote such an unlikeable MC, to which I said, wait he’s unlikeable?

And now, reader, we enter the most important period of my development: learning how to write better characters.

SEVEN RECIPES FOR REVOLUTION is Adult Epic Fantasy complete at 140,000 words. [Finally, a good title, normal genre, and correct wordcount!] It has YA crossover appeal and includes horror elements. It will appeal to fans of THE EMPIRE OF THE VAMPIRE’s unreliable frame-story narrator, THE KAIJU PRESERVATION SOCIETY’s lovable destructive kaiju, and magical food mechanics found in JRPG’s such as Final Fantasy 15 and Monster Hunter World.

Seventeen-year-old Paprick labors as an indentured butcher, carving carriage-sized cuts of meat from living kaiju so elite chefs can grill meals that impart magical abilities to the city rulers who eat them. But Paprick’s true passion is cooking, and he dreams of liberating his people by becoming a chef himself and sharing the kaijus’ magic. Problem is, indentures face execution for tasting kaiju-flesh and no one becomes a chef without inventing a recipe that centers the meat. [A bit wordy, but has all the elements we actually need here.]

When his debt becomes inescapable, Paprick skims flesh off his cuts to practice recipes at home. But skilled though he is, Paprick suffers a world that hasn’t seen a new recipe in a generation, supplies and creativity stifled by war and indentures; and his desperation grows as he starts to draw attention. Rooting through a destroyed spice market, Paprick uncovers a spice imported from lands unknown, and whips together a dry rub with the last of his stolen meat, inventing a recipe with a taste like none before. [This is also wordy, for what it’s worth.]

His joy is short-lived. The dish’s magic uncontrollably grows Paprick to kaiju-size, revealing his success to the entire city. Immediately, the rulers arrest him to plan his execution, but Paprick uses his wit, sharp as a butcher’s cleaver, to convince the rulers that he deserves a place as a chef’s apprentice–if they ever want to learn his Recipe.

Cleared of charges, Paprick still simmers on his dream of overthrowing the rulers and aligns with a rebel faction. As Paprick works as their spy, the rulers harass him for his recipe and the spice, and Paprick searches for its origin. But his search reveals there’s someone else inventing new recipes, someone who’s willing to cannibalize indentures to find the most gruesome power of all. [These stakes are vague]

What’s most important here is that this query isn’t actually all that good. I think Books 4 and 6 had much better queries. But there are some intangibles here.

First, I sent this query to 10 agents total. 9 were referrals. You remember Sunyi from way back in book 2? We stayed friends. She introduced me to a lot of people over the years. They also became friends. And as each of them got published, I continued to try as hard as I could to Not Be An Asshole. Eventually, they introduced me to their agents.

Second, the opening pages of this book were crisp. As wordy as the query was, agents who read the opening pages realized that book wasn’t bloated or wordy. It was a riotous adventure, and that made them hit the request button.

Ari Chen’s sixteenth birthday [I’ve managed to improve tremendously by book 2, having one character!] ends when gunmen murder her mother and slide a chloroform-dipped rag over Ari’s face. She wakes in an immersive virtual reality world with five teens and a message from their kidnappers: wait for ransoms or conquer Riddle’s End Castle, a deadly dungeon. With no family to pay her ransom, Ari’s choice is clear–even if death in VR means death IRL. [With the help of AbsuleWrite’s Query Letter Hell, I’ve also learned to have stakes and character details!]

Drawing on the uncertainty of the situation, Ari relentlessly persuades the others to fight for their freedom rather than waiting for their parents to save them. The group unites behind her and Ari shepherds it into the Castle where deathtraps, from a murderous garden to a field of war, assault the group. But though Ari’s cleverness keeps them alive, her suspicion goes into overdrive. No kidnappers would do this.

Searching for answers, Ari accidentally breaks the VR and returns to the real world. [If I was nitpicking, I’d say I went too far into the story here. This is like halfway through Act 2 and it actually shows some major flaws with the book’s structure] She eavesdrops on the kidnappers and learns of their unnamed man inside the group, ushering them towards the Castle’s end. As she processes the betrayal, the kidnappers catch her and force her back inside the Castle. But now Ari has a plan.

Determined to confront the traitor, Ari exposes the truth. She’ll get her answers. But as accusations fly, Ari becomes the prime suspect–after all, she convinced the group to go and then disappeared. As patience thins, someone suggests killing Ari to make a point to the kidnappers. With the group intent on killing her, Ari will prove her innocence and oust the real traitor or die before she can conquer the Castle and earn her freedom. [Yay, stakes again]

UNTIL RIDDLES END is a young adult – light science fiction novel complete at 80,000 words. It will appeal to fans of THE MAZE RUNNER and READY PLAYER ONE.

Riddles actually got the most requests of any book I wrote, but it also got the most rejections, primarily because I refused to acknowledge a few things. One, writing a sapphic MC at this time was a hard sell (no regrets), and two, everything about this book was MG. The query reads very YA, but the book itself was MG with a too-old character. Sometimes, it just takes years of experience within publishing to learn things like that.

CW: Suicidal Ideation

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[If you’re wondering why none of these have been the same genre, you’re thinking the right things. I should’ve stuck with the same genre and improved incrementally. Instead, I thought I was a great author, ready to be published and that I was chasing the wrong markets. Read on for IRONY.]

Seventeen-year-old Wes is done letting his bipolar disorder control him—he’s more than his diagnosis. But before he can embrace his new self, he needs to apologize for the person he was, the person that blamed his mother in a suicide letter. Problem is, she’s missing on a newly discovered planet and her research director won’t authorize a rescue. So Wes does the only thing he can: he steals a shuttle and races to find his mother.

But that ocean planet is no gentle beach. Twin moons raise tsunamic tides and hurricanes battle for control of the atmosphere. Unable to control the shuttle in their winds, Wes crashes into the waves, losing his meds and the stability they provide him. [I’m not going to lie, I feel like I’d gotten the hang of queries by this point, and I think this reads well.]

Washed ashore, his logic takes a backseat to his emotions. Anxiety tickles his doubts. Depression numbs his body. Fighting to stay focused, Wes scours the island for his mother, but as he does, amphibious aliens rise from the floodwaters. With rows of teeth, ax-ended tails, and strange voices hissing inside his head, they’re like the nightmares of his depression come to life. And the waters keep rising.

Then a new voice enters his mind, that of Serenity, an alien rebel fighting the dictator who supposedly kidnapped Wes’ mom. Serenity promises she can help rescue his mother if he’ll help her rebels. There’s a whole civilization beneath the waves and it’s dying, but Wes’ understanding of the base’s energy supply may save Serenity’s resource-depleted home. Without his meds to bring him stability, Wes must decide to trust the stranger’s voice inside his head or succumb to his disorder, whispering it’s all a trap.

THE STAR SEA is Young Adult Speculative, blending elements of Soft Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, and is complete at 93,000 words. It is STRANGE THE DREAMER meets NYXIA UPRISING and will appeal to fans of THE DISASTERS.

This didn’t get much traction in the trenches–YA SF is a tough sell, YA suicidal SF is a pretty much impossible sell–but a few agents did like the opening pages enough to request. Every agent who requested a full said they’d offer on quality but that there was no publisher in the world that would buy this book. It was too dark. And I was relieved.

Writing this book was a really painful experience, and I learned something extremely valuable from it. I can’t write dark books like this. It ruins my life, living in that headspace. Sometimes, that’s more valuable than an offer.

This was also the point that I realized (with Sunyi’s help) that my voice didn’t belong in YA.

BATTERYCRAFT is a standalone Adult Sci-Fantasy Heist Thriller complete at 113,000 words. [Gideon had just come out; Sapphic Sci-Fantasy was the golden ticket; I was leaning into being a weird af queer writer. THIS WAS GOING TO BE IT. Just… ignore… that I included 4 different genres in my book description…] It has a predominantly queer cast, can sit on a shelf beside FOUNDRYSIDE and THE CHIMERA CODE, and will appeal to those who love Brandon Sanderson’s magic systems and worldbuilding but not the lack of representation in his cosmere. [Yeah, i called out Brando in my query. Smart? Probably not, especially since I queried his agent.]

CW: Pet Health. This query and manuscript feature a dog’s failing health. Scenes include the dog’s physical hardships, and tension rises steadily as the pet’s health wanes. However, the dog lives happily and healthily due to the protagonist’s determination and ingenuity. [In case this unclear, I did include this in the query letter, and several agents specifically mentioned that they were thankful I did.]

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By day, Nikel slogs out a living as a blaster, crafting magical bombs for nobles so they can blow expensive crystals out of mines; by night, she applies her skills to thievery to save her malamute. The pup needs expensive meds to survive an accident Nikel caused, and Nikel won’t let her companion die for her mistakes.. [Yep, those two periods were in every letter I sent.]

When Antim Prospect, the city’s top crime boss, offers Nikel a simple pickpocket job in exchange for the meds she needs, Nikel urgently crafts a harmless bomb as a distraction and lies in wait for her noble target. But Antim’s tech malfunctions, killing the noble and leaving her the scapegoat for police.

Between Antim’s criminal machinations and a relentless cop’s pursuit, Nikel scrambles for a solution to her dog’s spiraling health and instead discovers an illegal procedure that would mod her own body with magic–at a price. With her pup’s health waning, Nikel will have to choose between bootlicking for the crime boss that betrayed her to get the meds or a deadly operation that might, might give her the power she needs to save her pup herself.

So, double periods aside, this was one of my better queries. The problem, much like with Book 4, is that I wrote something that was unpublishable. With book 4, it was that it was too dark for the market. With book 6, it was that I was trend chasing, and I was already too late.

Agents loved Nikel and Pearl (that’s the pup), but they felt it was a tough sell in the crowded queer sci-fantasy market, which hadn’t even existed before Gideon.

LESSON: Don’t chase trends.

SECONDARY LESSON: Don’t bash multimillionaires in your query because it’s edgy.