Well, after over a month of hard work, I achieved one of my goals today. I finally finished the first draft of The Procurers.

This one’s been a long time coming. The original idea was for this series to all be one book, titled The 8^th Realm. I started writing that around New Year’s 2021, nearly 3 years ago. I got almost 100,000 words in before getting hopelessly stuck: after a few months of wrestling with the story, trying to figure out what the problem was, I put it aside in favour of some other projects, hoping my subconscious mind would eventually solve the problem for me.

And, thankfully, it did. Of course, that was well over a year later: it wasn’t until partway through 2022 that I realized the story I was trying to tell in The 8^th Realm was too big for just one book. And so, I split it into a trilogy, in which The 8^th Realm would be book 3.

(Now, of course, I’m thinking this series could be 4 or 5 books long: by the time I actually return to The 8^th Realm, it might be 6 or 7. Who knows?)

And so, about a year ago, I started work on book 1, then titled The 2^nd Realm. Things went swimmingly for a while, but I eventually found myself stuck again. I’d gotten about 2/3 of the way through the book, maybe: there was a certain event, though, that takes place about 2/3 of the way through the book, that I just couldn’t get a handle on. The whole thing, and the lead-up to it, was a logistical nightmare.

Past that event, though, I knew what I wanted to write. I knew how the book ended. And so, last fall, I jumped ahead and wrote the ending. And then, when I still didn’t know how to straighten out this middle section that was giving me so much trouble, I put the book aside.

After struggling on Chronicles of Usi for a while, though—and during the dreary morass that was  my summer—I started getting ideas for this one again. Ideas on how to solve that messy little middle section that’d been tripping me up. And so, I ventured forward: and now, even though my solutions probably don’t make much sense, and I’m going to need to spend countless more hours making the plot actually coherent (among many other improvements), it’s at least done.

It’s over.

…well, for now, anyway.

As I said, there’s still a lot of work to be done. And some of you might ask: what does that mean, specifically? When might I actually get to read this The Procurers book you’ve written?

Well, to answer the second question first, potentially never. That’s the thing about being a neophyte writer. There’s no guarantee you’ll see any level of success. Even a level as simple as “my work has been put out there!” Yeah, might never happen.

To answer the first part, though…well, that’s trickier.

Every draft is different. Every book is different. When it comes to editing, though, generally speaking, my process is this:

1. I give the book at least a few months to “settle.” During this time, I work on other projects. I try not to think too much about what I just finished. I put my focus elsewhere, so I can come back to it later with fresh eyes.
2. I come back, and I do two edits. The first is a quick look-over, just to see if there are any major pacing problems, and to double check whether the plot makes any sense at all. I don’t usually do in-depth rewrites during this first edit; I just take note of anything super egregious, and leave it for the second edit.
3. That second edit is an excruciating, chapter-by-chapter close re-read. I do my best to polish my prose (my first draft prose is really rough sometimes) and make the changes I told myself I’d need back during that first edit.
4. Once the second edit is done, it depends. I might sit on the book again for a while, then repeat steps 2 and 3. But, if I feel like it’s ready for it, I move past this murky step and into step 5.
5. Show the book to peer readers, if there are any out there willing to read it. I don’t always have much luck with this. I sometimes fantasize about making a friend in the writing/publishing community who’d be willing to be a peer reader for me (if they’re a writer, then of course I’d offer my own services as peer reader in exchange). But we’ll see if that ever actually happens.
6. If I do get peer feedback, I’ll sit down and edit again.
7. Once I’m satisfied with the latest round of edits, I would, ideally, send my book off to a professional editor, to get their feedback. Pro editors don’t come cheap, though, and that’s especially true for a 184,000-word monster like The Procurers.
8. Following a pro editor’s feedback, I’d edit yet again.

Following step 8, the process gets murky, because…well, I’ve never really made it that far. I got there with Kosan, the only novel I’ve shown to a pro editor so far, but following that experience, I eventually decided  Kosan needed to be completely rewritten from the ground-up. Theoretically, though, if I were able to work with an editor to the point where both of us were satisfied with what the book looked like, I’d then do more edits, and then at last start the querying process.

I’ve talked about the querying process before, so I won’t get too much into it here. Suffice to say, the querying process is its own special kind of hell. In a perfect world, though, if I wanted my book published with one of the major publishers, I’d query a bunch of literary agents. One of them would eventually take me as a client, then start marketing my book to the big publishers.

Even getting an agent doesn’t guarantee you a book deal. The big publishers might still decide not to buy. But hearing the pitch from an experienced agent—especially one who’s already sold the publishers a bunch of successful books that’ve made them a lot of money—will help them at least take it more seriously.

And then—again, we’re talking about a perfect world here—some publisher would buy the publication rights, and I’d sign a contract. I’d get a cash advance, and the publisher would go on ahead preparing to market and publish the book.

That process can take about a year, by the way. Just the marketing and publishing step.

And then, if nothing goes wrong (which it all too often can), in this perfect world I’ve dared to imagine, the book would finally hit the shelves (both physical and virtual), where hopefully someone would buy it.

So yeah. It’s a long, arduous process. Because I haven’t published anything yet, it’s quite possible my first books would come out with a smaller press: there are still some indie publishers out there who take direct queries, without the need for an agent. If I were to pitch The Procurers to one of them, and one of them accepted, the process might go slightly quicker. But I’d also be robbed of the reach and marketing power that only the gigantic publishing conglomerates can provide, so…yeah. It’s a trade-off.

So, with how long The Procurers is, and how messy the first draft is, and how long some of the other steps in this process can take, the absolute earliest I could ever see this book getting published would be…oh, I don’t know…maybe 2028 or 2029. And that’s me being super-duper optimistic. It’s very likely it would take years, maybe even decades longer.

Or, you know. It might never come out.

But! Fear not. The Procurers isn’t the only book I’ve written. And, to be honest, it’s not even my best candidate for debut novel. For one thing, it’s too long: publishers in the Science Fiction/Fantasy field generally want something between 90,000 and 120,000 words out of newer writers. They’re reluctant to go over that unless you’re a seasoned vet with an established audience and a proven track record (printing and binding is expensive, yo). For another, I have two much shorter books way closer to completion: Nightmares Inc. and The Ravage. Those two are far more likely to be my first novel than The Procurers is.

Although, like anything in life, that’s not guaranteed.

But yeah. That’s where that all stands. The Procurers is still years away from even being ready to show to agents and publishers, let alone getting published. Finishing the first draft is just one tiny step on that road.

But it’s a step nonetheless.

And to finally have taken that step is such a relief.

So what’ll I do now? Write more books, of course! I’ve got to expand The Ravage a bit, get it up to that 90,000-word mark. I’ve got to finish Blueblood. Get back to Usi. Finish the Kosan rewrite. Eventually get the sequels to Nightmares Inc. and The Procurers written. And that’s not even mentioning the myriad of other ideas I’ve got on the go.

Yes, indeed, even though this first draft is done, I’ve still got my work cut out for me. But anyway! I’ll leave it at that. Like always, until next time, have fun, stay safe and keep reading.