Late in the summer of 2007 I finished work on the latest revision (version 4, by my count) of my first novel. I'm happy enough with it that I'm ready to unleash it upon the world, so I've been querying potential agents. No joy yet on that front, but from everything I've read and heard, it's a long slow process and it gets done when it gets done. Right now the "humor/science fiction" category doesn't seem to be at the top of anyone's hot list, but I'll keep plugging away until I get somewhere.

The working title for the first novel is They Who Are Having A Bad Day. The word count, as of this latest revision, is up to 132,000. Most publishers these days seem to want closer to 120,000 or even 100,000 words for a first-time novelist, so I may have a lot of cutting to do. I hate to cut anything, of course, but I'm hoping the material that needs to be cut can be salvaged for a later book in the series or some other project. If not, I may post the unused excerpts, if I still think they're funny and/or insteresting, as "bonus" material here on this website.

In case you hadn't seen it yet, I've been posting more step-by-step progress reports on my blog and discussion forum here at Irvania.com. There's not a whole lot there yet, but I expect things to pick up as the publishing process rolls along.