On the Quest for the Riven Blade Read My Bio Accept Your Mission Path of Peril Synopsis Read the Excerpts Sign the Petition

It took about eighteen months to write the first draft of Path of Peril. I started out just writing a story I thought was fun to read—loosely based on a Dungeons & Dragons adventure some friends and I were playing at the time. That manuscript was over 1,000 double-spaced pages long.

When I was done, I felt that my story could compete with what was being published. So I began to investigate how to make that happen.

Big publishers won't accept unagented submissions—so I queried agents. I was quickly advised to cut it down to around 700 pages—which necessitated "killing off" two of my main point-of-view characters (sorry Lars and Lucan). I spent six months honing the manuscript again with a long-suffering reader/friend who helped me every step of the way (thanks Alex!) This step was brutal—putting each paragraph under the gun as to how important it really was to the overall story—and cutting it as much as possible. I tried to edit existing chapters into scenes, scenes into paragraphs, and paragraphs into sentences whenever possible.

When I was done, I was recommended to Matt Bialer, who represents some of the most popular fantasy authors: including Tracy Hickman, Robert Newcomb, Tad Williams, Eldon Thompson and many more. Matt read the manuscript, made a number of excellent suggestions, and I spent another four months editing to incorporate his comments and ideas.

When he was satisfied, he began to submit it to publishers. That brings us to now (back to mission).