An Attempt to Garner a Literary Agent

Please bear with me as I try to barrel through this submission.

I started considering agents today and through my research your name came up. You are listed among the top 5 or 6, if not the top agent for the mythopoeic series I am creating. I began looking into you and found that your last day to accept new material is literally today, so I am throwing this together with some urgency and not just a little angst.

Over the last two years I embarked upon a journey that was both unexpected and undeniably satisfying.

I never intended to write a novel but the encouragement from my brother and mother, as I wrote each chapter, kept me going.

I am NOT a professional writer… I do not know what I don’t know, and yet I am doing it anyway, while playing all the parts by myself.

So if you only work with established writers or those that have been struggling for more than the short time I have, you can discard me now. I will however strive to find a good fit elsewhere.

I do not want to present myself as if I know this industry of writing, editing and publishing… I have learned just enough to self-edit and self-publish.

I am not a professional author by trade, and though my focus on mythopoeic narrative and structure might push me in that direction, I do not as of yet claim the title of professional writer. I come from a non-literary background in IT, but seems I was uniquely suited to the creation of three conlangs, a trilogy framework and supporting linguistic texts.

My focus is mythopoeic literary fiction, as far as I can determine, though I also lean into what I believe is literary fiction. Ultimately I will let those with more knowledge make those calls if I get that far.

My attempt is not to be Tolkien or Sanderson, Le Guin or Wolfe, but I have to position myself against the best because they are the standards. I am not them, and they are not me… but it is my hope that I can create something that strikes to the depth that they did. One and all, they were professional writers, at least eventually, with resources and companions garnered through years of writing. I have none of that. I have strove to do what I feel is the better story and find my own voice amidst the winds of publishing.

If I knew what I was doing I would not need an agent, at least in my mind. Do not take my acknowledgement of ignorance as not having a goal. What I have is good… but great is only determined in retrospect, and excellence is only determined by others.

The Heater and The Hack is the first novel, which will be followed up as follows:

3 trilogies, the first in a medieval setting (this is the era which contains “The Heater and The Hack”, the second in a classic setting a millennium prior to the first, and if we get that far, the third a millennium after the first trilogy. Three to four novellas, supplimental to the first trilogy, following characters that eventually join Emanrasu and the White.

I plan to write the two books that Rezua picked up from the book-binder in Erzt that cover the linguistics of Hadokai Tubatonona as both a linguistic and narrative journey of the in-world writer.

The font I created for Hadokai Tubatonona allows me to effectively maintain consistency in typing the language.

zubava bana zufova pensam
(write the past, understand the future)

https://leswaggoner.com/hadokai-tubatonona/
https://leswaggoner.com/horozhi-seleshia/
https://leswaggoner.com/hoatak-urtakan/

The languages are register with KreativeKorp alongside other well-known linguistic ventures such as Na’vi, Enochian, Dothraki, High Valyrian, Telerin, and Khuzdul among many others.

One thing I need you to understand is that I do not write to spoon feed my readers. I feel there is enough content that readers will understand by context and osmosis rather than treating them as unable to get it. Repetition of certain elements is intentional and meant to numb the reader of their incessant presence and reference, until they become part of the background of the story.

I have self-published, but I have no problems republishing under a pseudonym and making any changes required.