First Book Complete, Editor Found! J.A. McConkey celebrates finishing his debut epic fantasy novel (~130,000 words) and hiring a developmental editor. The epic/dark fantasy book enters editing in October.
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I did it! I wrote an entire fantasy fiction book, edited it (several times), did multiple rewrites, and finally went pencils down (sort of).
So, for the good of the order let's dig into what's going on here. This will serve as the regular blog me, J.A. McConkey, an upcoming (depending on when you're reading this) fantasy fiction author. I'll use the blog to dive into subjects that I may not dig into as deeply on the newsletter, which is included in this post and I would love if you signed up!
A couple little neat items:
So for this inaugural installment of my blog, let's quickly bring you up to speed on where I am today.
A couple weeks ago, I finally finished the first draft of my book. From there, I decided to look for editing help. Since my first choice is to pursue traditional publication, I want to get my book into an 'agent-ready' state before actually sending query letters to agents. Just like a sports agent, literary agents represent you with publishers and attempt to find a publisher interested in buying your book.
So, as of yesterday (6/24/25), I accepted an offer of developmental editing services from an editor that I'm really excited to work with. He's both written in and edited for the Forgotten Realms universe. D&D for anyone that may be wondering. This includes multiple books by R.A. Salvatore. I'm thrilled with this partnership, in no small part due to the fact that reading Salvatore's books in my formative years of finding fantasy fiction served as some of the inspiration for this book.
Some may be wondering how I found an editor. I personally used Reedsy. I thought that their curation of editors was top-notch. Everyone that I met with (of which there were six) was extremely impressive. I met with folks that have provided services for the likes of Brandon Sanderson, which was a lot of fun. I honestly wish I could work with everyone that I met with.
A bit of info about the book. I've created a new epic fantasy world and would use the following sub-genres for what I've written: high-fantasy and dark fantasy. There's coming of age, political intrigue, finding love, betrayal, tragic death, epic-scale battles, intrigue and spy-craft, humor, and many of the elements that epic fantasy readers love. If this sounds like your kind of book, awesome! You should subscribe to the newsletter. If it doesn't sound like your kind of book...you should still subscribe to the newsletter!
I plan to write a trilogy, but if agents, publishers and readers like it and the world keeps growing as I write, I could see it going longer. This first installment is a bit on the shorter end of epic fantasy, but on the upper end of debut author length, clocking in around 130,000 words (as of today). I'm sure there will be trimming and some rewrites through the editing process, so who knows where it will end up.
The book will enter the developmental editing process in the first month of October. After that, I'll have a pretty good idea if I have a book that's 'worthy' of an agent. I'm doing my best to keep expectations tampered, as I am well aware that the publishing industry is difficult. However, my hope and dream is that I'll find myself on the shelves of your favorite bookstore in the future and able to make a career out of this. I have so many story ideas that I've written down over the years and I've finally found the voice and ability to write them.
I feel like that's a good place to stop the first entry. I'm excited to write more of these! So, let's start a signing off tradition for the blog. With each entry, I'll include a few things. Maybe I'll change it around in the future as I have more ideas. And maybe it will go at the beginning instead of the end. Who knows, I don't make the rules. But for now, I'll include my current writing project and where I am in the process, what I'm currently reading, and my favorite book so far this year. I also encourage you to follow me on Goodreads! I'm going to try to get better at writing real reviews for the books I read instead of just my star rating.
Current writing project: Book 2! Started a little less than 2 weeks ago and currently 7 chapters and ~20,000 words in
Currently reading: Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (it's gooooooood)
Favorite book of the year so far: The Will of the Many by James Islington
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