January was a mixed bag.

I sent out a final round of queries for Aiko’s Dive at the beginning of the year. None of the (few) responses were positive.

Though there are still a handful of agents on my query list, I’ve decided to end Aiko’s journey. It’s a painful decision to make, but something about the novel just wasn’t grabbing agents. And none of the edits I made to it, or the query letter, changed that fact.

But I’m not giving up, just moving on.

In January, I revisited Infinity’s Heir again. To tighten up the manuscript even more, I performed a few rounds of “filler word” edits. Focusing on words like had, see, was, and that, I managed to skim almost 6,000 words off of the manuscript, bringing the final word count down to 91,000. It sounds extreme, but the final product is a novel that features lean writing that I’m very proud of.

Past that, I’ve spent time focusing on the query letter. After working my way through the bulk of the Query Shark archives, I’ve settled on something that feels like it cuts to the heart of what the story is about (though, considering my poor querying record, there’s a better-than-even chance I’m just delusional).

The next step is drafting a synopsis.

My goal for Infinity’s Heir is to drive it through a round of tough critique before querying any agents. Since #Revpit is coming up in April (and last year’s result was a positive change for the manuscript), I plan on submitting the story a second time. Past that, I’m going to run it through a “surgery” process on one of the writing sites I’m a member of. The goal of the surgery is to look at the entire query package and get feedback on what can be refined to make it that much stronger. Finally, I have a few beta readers looking at the text to see if there’s anything else I missed.

In all, I’m feeling very good about Infinity’s Heir. I know I said the same thing about Aiko’s Dive before staring the long, arduous query process, but Infinity’s Heir is a project that’s been around for far longer, and it’s been through far more edits. While I know to temper my expectations when querying, I feel far more confident about how far Infinity’s Heir has come. Whether it can go the distance, however, is still up in the air.

As I always say, querying is the hardest part of the writing process, but it’s an exercise in growth and perseverance. What I did for Aiko’s Dive didn’t work, so I’m going to apply the lessons I’ve learned and apply them moving forward. With any luck, it’ll make the next querying journey that much better!