Author Hard Days 8–14: Introducing Project R and Starting the Querying Process
The second phase of Author Hard shifted from building the infrastructure around my writing career to putting my fiction and publishing work more directly into the world.
I'm Reagan Westerly, a gothic fiction writer and social media professional. Author Hard is my 30-day project documenting the actions I'm taking to move my writing career forward following a publisher rejection.
After spending the first week organizing opportunities, working on my website, developing my author media kit, pitching podcasts, working on Project H, planning new newsletter fiction, and building a query tracker, the next stage focused heavily on Project R.
Project R is my completed approximately 40,000-word gothic short story collection.
Introducing Project R
Part of this stage of Author Hard involved sharing more information about the manuscript I've been trying to publish.
Project R contains four first-person gothic stories connected by themes of obsession, transgression, haunting, revelation, and choice.
Although the stories have different characters, settings, and central conflicts, each explores people confronting the consequences of what they desire, what they have lost, or who they have tried to become.
The Devouring Light
The Devouring Light is set in 1908 Spokane and follows playwright Edmund Varrick.
Edmund becomes increasingly consumed by his desire to create art that will outlive him. His pursuit of artistic legacy becomes entangled with his muse, Clara, and his obsession with producing something eternal begins to obscure the person directly in front of him.
The story explores ambition, art, obsession, legacy, and the cost of wanting to become unforgettable.
The Haunting of Gloseby Manor
The Haunting of Gloseby Manor follows Elise Harrow, a wallpaper restorer whose professional reputation was damaged after a man took credit for her work.
Her work brings her to a Victorian manor, where restoration begins revealing something hidden beneath the house's surfaces: evidence connected to a governess who appears to have been erased from its history.
The story combines gothic haunting with questions of authorship, recognition, erasure, and whose work is remembered.
Cipher and Bone
Cipher and Bone follows Simon Delver.
The story centers on an exclusive bar, self-reinvention, and Simon's increasingly disturbing desire to become someone impossible to overlook.
His pursuit of transformation pushes the story into body horror as the line between reinventing an identity and destroying one begins to disappear.
The Blue Room
The final story in Project R, The Blue Room, follows Eleanor, a widow writing letters to her dead husband, Arthur.
Through grief, memory, and the identity she constructed around her marriage, Eleanor begins confronting the possibility that she may have spent much of her life becoming the person someone else expected her to be.
The story explores grief, identity, marriage, memory, and what remains when a life built around another person suddenly changes.
Sharing the Writing Alongside the Publishing Process
Introducing Project R during Author Hard was important because the project isn't only about querying.
The manuscript itself is the reason the querying process exists.
Sharing the collection's characters and premises provides context for the publishing work happening throughout the series and establishes the kind of gothic fiction I write.
Project R is currently being submitted while I continue writing and developing other fiction.
Writing While Working in Motorsports Social Media
This stage of Author Hard also included a more personal look at what my daily life actually looks like while pursuing a writing career.
Outside of fiction, I work professionally in motorsports social media.
A mini day-in-the-life entry during Author Hard incorporated that work alongside the writing and creative projects happening outside of my professional responsibilities.
Motorsports and gothic fiction are very different forms of storytelling, but both are part of my professional and creative life.
Author Hard is taking place while I continue working, writing, building my online presence, and developing multiple creative projects rather than in a period devoted exclusively to becoming an author.
Preparing Project R for Literary Agents
After organizing my submission research and building a query tracker, I began identifying literary agents who might be appropriate for Project R.
Because Project R is an approximately 40,000-word gothic short story collection rather than a conventional full-length novel, researching appropriate representation requires looking carefully at an agent's interests, genres, formats, submission guidelines, and openness to short story collections.
The goal isn't simply to submit the manuscript to as many people as possible.
It is to identify publishing professionals whose interests genuinely overlap with the work.
Sending the First Round of Project R Queries
During this stage of Author Hard, I sent the first round of Project R queries to three literary agents.
The submissions followed the research and preparation completed earlier in the project: reviewing potential agents, checking individual submission requirements, preparing the appropriate materials, tracking the submissions, and sending the collection back into consideration.
Rather than querying every possible literary agent simultaneously, I began with a smaller initial round.
Project R was officially back out in the publishing world.
The outcome of those submissions is outside of my control. Sending them wasn't.
Developing New Gothic Fiction
At the same time, I continued developing the free gothic short story intended for my newsletter.
The concept, title, logline, and expanded premise had already been established, while additional story planning and beat-sheet work remained before drafting.
This creates a second track within Author Hard.
Project R is a completed work being submitted for potential publication. Project H is a novel in development and drafting. The newsletter story is new short fiction being created with the intention of eventually giving readers something of mine they can immediately access.
Together, the projects represent different stages of the writing and publishing process happening simultaneously.
What Happened During This Stage of Author Hard?
The second stage of Author Hard brought the fiction itself into greater focus.
I introduced the four protagonists of Project R, shared more of the gothic stories behind the manuscript, documented part of my life working in motorsports social media, continued researching publishing opportunities, and sent the first three literary agent queries for Project R.
I also continued developing new gothic fiction for my newsletter while working on the larger writing career surrounding those projects.
Author Hard isn't designed around knowing the outcome in advance.
The purpose is to document the actions, experiments, submissions, writing, and professional work happening while the outcome is still unknown.
Author Hard is a 30-day writing career project created by gothic fiction writer Reagan Westerly following a publisher rejection. The series documents querying, writing, publishing research, author platform development, social media, YouTube, and the process of building a creative career in real time.
