Well after four years of writing, rewriting, editing, and struggling to find a publisher I've finally been able to get the first two books of the Centurion Cycle into print. Making the situation seem unreal if not ironic, it was only after I had almost completely given up on the idea of publishing that a publisher told me they wanted to print the first two books of the series, catching me completely off-guard. Since they wanted to rush things through I had only 11 days to come out with final versions that I could live with which led to a week of sleepless nights so that I could return the books back to them before becoming totally burned out. That was back in late January. Both books then came out together on the same weekend just a few days ago. Now my fears have switched from... will they ever get published to will anyway bother to buy them. Since The Centurion and the Academy are only the first two books in a nine book series whatever hope I have of seeing the entire series in print pretty much depend on how well these first two do, which has me scared to death since I have no idea what is considered a 'hit' in the genre of gay science fiction and fantasy so it's been back to the sleepless worry filled nights. Even though I should know better than to worry over something I have no control over, I still can't help but wonder what is going on. It's very hard to tell if anything is really going on until Amazon decideds where to classify the books. Right now they're sitting in limbo-land outside any specific genre which makes them near impossible to find unless you search under my pen name.
It's been a long and crazy journey these past four years. Out of all of it the only thing I can say I truely enjoyed out of it all was the actually writing of the series. There's so many Catch-22's out there in the publishing world. Writing a query letter was an exercise of futility and depression as each one got rejected if answered at all. After two years of doing that I decided no publisher would take me seriously unless I had an agent... the sad irony of that is that it's almost impossible to get an agent unless you've already have published. It took a year of banging my head against agent's doors to finally give up on that idea. Having almost completely given up on the whole publishing idea I decided to take the simple lazy route and only try publishers who accepted stories by email and promised a quick reply. That turned out to be a little more promising... even got a few saying that they might be interested if I would make a few revisions. I would eagerly make the revisions but in the end none of them took the hook. It was a very slow process since it is expected and only polite to go to onlyt one publisher at a time. So another year went by. I was already ready to throw in the towel and had started posting chapters on my yahoo group and Nifty. If it wasn't for my editor and a circle of fans who beleived in me I probably wouldn't have tried again but I did, not really expecting anything to result from it. Nine days latter I saw I got an email reply. I took in a deep breath expecting to get the usual letter of rejection only to cough it out when I read that they actually wanted to publish the books. There was joy and excitement but mostly releif. After so many years of effort a publisher had finally seen my work as something worthy to print and invest in.
This of course led to the week of panic. As part of the contract I had to remove every public copy of the story off the net. For every site but Nifty this was easily done. For almost a week however Nifty didn't return my emails requesting that the story be removed which put me in a terrribly awkward position. So long as there were public copies out there I couldn't sign the book contracts in good faith. Finally after I sent an email pratically begging for a reply Nifty finally agreed to take the series down so long as I replaced it with a new story which I started doing last week.
I've been waiting for life to settle back down to normal but between doing the final line edit, getting disowned by my brother for getting a gay-themed story published in the first place, and trying to write a new story for Nifty it's been quite a rollercoster. Still if I had to do it all over again I probably would have done exactly the same except telling my older brother about it. You can't please everyone after all. It's been a rough six weeks but hopefully things will start to settle down. I could do with a few days of complete rest. Even as tired as I am right now my muse is still running at full speed. I have already written all the chapters for the replacement story and have started on a completely new one, keeping my editor/cheerleader busy-busy. Having always been quite the introvert writting has become the main way I release all the buried emotions I just can't put into spoken words. Writing has been my main source of joy, not to mention salvation in this chaotic world we live in.
Listed down below is the summery of the first two books in the series as well as the links to the Amazon pages where they can be found. I'm also adding a link to my yahoo group where I will be starting to post new stories on, including the ones I hope to publish some day if these first two do well. Well that's pretty much it on my side of things. As I've said it's been quite an adventure and not one to be attempted without a thick skin and a cirlce of friends who beleive in you even when you don't. Take care and enjoy.
JMH
Summery of The Centurion and the Academy, the first two books of The Centurion Cycle:
The Centurion Cycle a series of epic proportions begins with the three part first book titled "The Centurion". It opens with the start of a war between two great powers, Qul Tos ruled by the Ice Queen, Regent Eleanor against the Domus Empire led by its famed Centurion General, Agamemnon. At stake is the fate of their son, the young man Jason, who, because of his cruel mother has been forced to live most of his life exiled in the Labyrinth Tower, more of a prison than a home. For 21 years Jason lives without the company of other men, a na
