Testing My Patience - Part One

A writer's journey toward traditional publication

Post One — Let's Start at the Beginning. Which is Actually the Middle.

I have written three novels.

Nobody asked me to write any of them.

I was a carpenter for most of my working life. I built things with my hands. I measured twice and cut once and at the end of a job there was something solid and real and useful that hadn't existed before. I understood that world completely.

Then, in 2022, Tracey died of cancer. I was fifty-three years old, and I had never once considered writing a novel. Grief, it turns out, has its own agenda.

I wrote Bonkas in the aftermath of losing her. I have no completely rational explanation for why. I just know that it needed to come out, and writing was the only place it could go. When I finished it, I did what most first-time authors do when they have no idea what they're doing — I self-published it on Amazon.

Nobody told me to do that either. I just did it.

Then I wrote a second novel. The Barn Door Stayed Closed. Different book entirely. Self-published that one too.

And now I've written a third. Clonfert. And this time, I'm doing something different.

This time I'm going the long way round.

This blog is about that journey. The process of seeking traditional publication for the first time — the query letters, the agents, the waiting, the rejections, the small victories, and the large silences in between. I'm going to write about all of it honestly and in real time because when I started this process, I couldn't find many people willing to tell the truth about what it actually looks like from the inside.

So here it is. From the inside.

A few things you should know about me before we go any further —

I live in Newport, South Wales. I am a carpenter by trade and an accidental author by circumstance. I have five sisters, which may explain more about my writing than any creative writing course ever could.

I am, as the title of this blog suggests, testing my patience.

I have zero connections in the publishing industry. No agent. No publisher. No literary contacts. No creative writing degree of any kind. No writing group. No mentor.

What I have is a finished novel that I believe in completely. A cover that stops you in your tracks.

A tagline I wrote for myself in a private note the moment I finished the final chapter —

It took one hundred and eighty years to heal the source.

And a plan. Of sorts

This is that plan. Unfolding in real time. No guarantees. No safety net. Complete honesty throughout.

Welcome to Testing My Patience.

Try to keep up.

— Steve