At the end 2008 I was working on one of my dream game development projects. And then Midway Games, my employer, went bankrupt. They shut down their external studios (including the one I worked at in Austin) and laid off their development teams. I wasn’t officially employed by anyone for about the first five months of 2009. So I wrote a novel.

The novel is called Jack of Hearts. You can read about it here.

Toward the end of 2009 and the first half of 2010 I revised, revised, revised. I sent drafts of the book to groups of early beta readers, and received tremendously valuable feedback. To everyone who read the book and shared your thoughts: thank you. Jack, Moribrand, Cassandra and Minnow would not be the same without you.

This year I set July as my deadline for when I would start sending out query letters to agents. Today is July 1st.  Tonight, I launched my first batch of query letters. Wish me luck.

Since I posted about “Near Successes” last week, I suppose that’s what I should call this one. Earlier this year I entered Jack of Hearts into the Writer’s League of Texas manuscript contest. (I also entered into the Houston Writer’s Guild  contest which I posted about here). The contest is based on the first 10 pages and a synopsis. Just got the result back in the mail.

Unfortunately, JoH didn’t win in its category. However, there’s a bright side–it did score a 9 in almost every category being judged (out of 10 possible). Which must mean the winners got 10’s, so congratulations to the winners. The judge(s) also wrote some very nice comments about the story. Here’s a quote:

“I am not sure how far along the author is in the drafting of Jack of Hearts and the second book in the series, but these first nine pages are polished and professional and warrant a further read by an agent/editor. Much potential for publication.”

The judges are anonymous, but whoever you are, thanks for the great comments! I’m about to begin submitting to agents, so I hope they agree with your assessment.