If you had been looking over my shoulder in the couple minutes before I finally chose that title, you would have seen me type, delete, and re-type about a half dozen titles. I didn’t want to be negative, but I feel like it’s kind of my nature. I’m trying to go against my nature, though, and believe what I’m going through trying to find an agent to take me on is all going to be worth it in the end.

To understand my situation, you need to go all the way back to about 2013, when I finished my first book, Harsh Prey. I worked on it for probably six months and, to be honest, it was dreadful. It still is. But it wasn’t just my worst book, which it definitely is; it was poorly edited and poorly proofread. Yes, it had some good moments and I think Harry’s voice is there, but it just wasn’t ready for publication. To add to my sin, I did about thirty seconds of research and slapped together a crap query letter, which I sent out to about eleventy billion agents over the next several months. I was convinced when I started sending those queries out I was on the verge of achieving my dream of being a published author. I was so wrong. I couldn’t tell you how many queries I sent, but it was in the dozens. Several dozen. Maybe over 100. And I got actual replies from actual humans a grand total of two times. One gave me helpful advice and one asked me for a longer excerpt. But that was as close as I came.

So I decided it must just be impossible to get published traditionally for a small-town boy like me. The cards were just too stacked against me. It had nothing to do with the quality of my book or the completely shoddy query I wrote or even with the fact it took me several queries before I even realized there were guidelines for each agent, much less follow them. Therefore, I was going to join the legion of people who had chosen self-publishing. I was going to stand up against these ridiculous gatekeepers who were only letting in people who had an inside track.

I did sell some books, but looking back, it was probably not the right move. Or, maybe it had less to do with the quality of that first book. I sold hundreds of copies of it, but the numbers for subsequent books were just not good. The irony is that, and I believe people who’ve read them all will agree, my later books are worlds better than the first. But I don’t blame people for not buying the rest of the series after reading that book.

So, I took a break from Harry and Dee, attempting to write a straight up fiction book. I still may finish it someday. But I missed my fictional alter ego. I especially didn’t like having left the series with a hole in the middle. And I still felt like the books were good enough for traditional publication. Now that I’m close to finishing the book that will make the story a complete six-book series, I’ve started querying with the first book again, only with a different first book. I’ll explain that in my next post, along with what’s going on with the new query process.