So I’ve been gone for a little while, but the absence was worth it.

If you follow my social media, then you’ll have doubtless seen my rather shitty TikTok documenting the little milestone I yet at 23:40 on Sunday night. I’ve finally completed the first draft of Herakles, and unlike last time, I’ve done so without hitting a completely batshit wordcount. I had more or less the entire third act scribbled in madman’s scrawl in one of my old notebooks, so mapping out and constructing the final quarter of the story wasn’t too hard. I had to lock myself in my office over a long weekend and bash out the last 7,000 words or so as fast as I humanely could.

Not a bad timeframe, all things considered – I started writing this in August last year, with a few weekly (or even monthly) breaks in between when my day job, my energy levels and my general ability to give a fuck all peaked and troughed in intensity. It’s not much longer than the first draft for Legion took (about 12 months, if I recall), which sort of makes sense – for that book, I had no job, no social life, and frankly, no functioning civilisation outside my door to distract me, but unlike this book (where I already had so much innate knowledge, and was constrained only by my imagination) I had a mammoth pile of research and historical accuracy to wade through.

And I have to say, having a hard copy in my hands after all this time is pretty damn satisfying. Not least with my lovely customised lever arch file from KleverCase to keep it in. Check them out. They make great products, surprisingly cheaply, and ship very quickly. I can see myself getting another one for my next first draft.

The hard copy isn’t just vanity, either. The file is going to sit in my room for a minimum of two weeks, before I dust it off and begin the First Great Edit. This will begin with a hard reread (with hopefully fresh eyes), while I scribble over the document with blue pen, marking out which bits are to be changed and which should just be chopped.

This is probably the most important part of the whole process (more so than the first draft, and perhaps more so than even roping in an external editor to perfect it). As many people say, it’s a lot easier to edit and fix up a bad story than it is to write up a great one from scratch. The first draft is when you tell it to yourself. The first edit is when you get it ready for other people. With Legion, it was probably the longest stage too, as I had to cut out at least 30,000 words to make it function well (which still, in hindsight, was far too long for any publisher to ever sniff at it). This time round, however, the edit won’t be quite so fraught. Not only did I tie it all up at a more sensible number, but I also did a great deal of the editing already; at the start of Act III, writer’s block made me slow-read the whole thing from scratch, and axe about 15,000 words. So there won’t be a great deal to do.

And after that… the Querying.

As many of you will remember, I queried Legion for about three or so months before impatience got the better of me, and I rammed the Self Publish button. This time round, I’m still as impatient, but I want to give querying another go, where I send cover letters, synopses and sample chapters off to any literary agencies accepting offers of representation. If that happens, the agent will then try to sell the rights to a publishing house and boom! You’re a traditionally published author (eventually… after at least a couple of years of production and bureaucracy. Dem wheels turn slowwww).

So that’s going to be another great slog, and one I can’t even bring myself to think about yet. This is probably going to be the most saleable thing I’ve ever written (a story with a very well known protagonist in a very fertile market, that functions as a standalone or trilogy opener, that is an acceptable length for the genre), so part of me even wonders if I should impose an end date for querying. I doubt I’ll ever have a strong a pitch as this again, and frankly, I’m not sure if I’ll even bother trying again if this fails. I very much doubt I’m going to top this book in terms of quality, never mind saleability.

So if things go well, you won’t see this until at least 2026. If things go badly, you’ll have it by the end of the year.

Funny old world.