“We fear. For the first time in countless orbits, we fear.”

These are the words spoken by the aloof, the mighty Bentusi in mission 15 of Homeworld Cataclysm, a sci-fi strategy game released in 2000. Honestly, they’re not even the most impactful words from that mission (I have a list) but right now they feel the most relevant because I’m sending my novel out to agents again. Meaning, that for the first time in countless obits, I’m a bit nervous, you know?

I’m proud of my novel, Beneath the Irithni Eye. I think it’s good. Other people have told me it’s good, one of them even told me it’s good and clearly written by me. Sure, he framed this as a criticism but we’ve been friends for like 20+ years now so I’ll forgive the festering resentment. It must be hard to stand so close to the sun for so long.

But yes, this is the second time I’ve gotten ready to send it out to agents. The first time, I followed the advice of  author James Kennedy from The Secrets of Story podcast. I did this because… it was a podcast I liked? And that episode came out around the time I had started pitching my novel? So like, cosmically, this is clearly the advice I was meant to follow.

Anyway, it felt like good advice. Make a list of suitable agents and send a few queries out a week rather than bombard every prospective agent immediately. The negatives of this approach is, oh god, the wait is unending, I am in hell. The positives are if you decide something isn’t working you can take some time, figure out what’s wrong, and still have people to contact once you fix it.

You see, when I finished my first draft of the novel it was 280,000 words long. Yeah, that was too many words. So, I took some time to edit it and I practically King Solomon’d it down to a trim 147,000. Now, moving swiftly on from the fact I frequently refer to cutting something in half as King Solomoning it, the revisions made the book a lot stronger but the introduction still feel like it belonged to the old book. Now to be clear, the old introduction wasn’t bad (I’ve never done anything bad in my life) but I wasn’t all that happy with it. However, when you’ve been looking at your book with a critical eye for months, you’re not happy with anything so at a certain point you accept that the book is what it is.

Except, I never really got happier with the introduction. So, when I wasn’t getting much feedback to my queries I decided that the introduction, that being the primary thing you are sending to agents, probably needed a bit of work. So, I stopped querying, dropped everything and committed myself to writing new introduction. It was terrible. I did so many versions. Again, all good (I cannot stress enough how wonderful and talented I am) but none of them felt right. It needed to set things up, to welcome a reader into the world, and, most importantly, keep all the jokes I really liked because some of them became plot relevant and the rest were simply Too Good.

It took some time but eventually, I wrote an introduction I was really happy with it. Is the new introduction the best part of the book? God no, I’m not a monster. It’s good but, rest assured, the book gets better and better with every page, like a roller coaster that only goes up. But in a world where that would be a good thing as opposed to completely undermining the concept of roller coasters.

So now, after much reflection and procrastination, it is time to start querying again. It’s a bit nerve wracking but at this point I think it’s the best book it can possibly be. Also, I have used the time to build this website which will further bolster the impact of my queries. How? Well you see, if any prospective agents come to this site (Is this you???) and read this blog they can see THE MAP.

Doesn’t it look good? Actually, hold on, I better let my wife look over it to see if she objects to any of the new names of places…. no, they’re fine. I did change the shape of continent since she last saw it but, you know, probably for the best.

Anyways, yeah. I’m ready. Now, allow me to get back to the real point of this blog. Behold, my top five lines from Homeworld: Cataclysm.

1. We… are… not… monsters
2. We see our own madness reflected in yours.
3. You’re worse than the beast! At least the Beast doesn’t pretend to be righteous!
4. We fear. For the first time in countless orbits, we fear
5. Desist and we will allow you to leave. We… regret the loss of your memories.

Yes, these are all from Mission 15. It’s a very good mission. No, Homeworld: Cataclysm has nothing to do with my book. I just like it.