Patrick J. Heck

Not long ago I watched a vlog in which someone described their journey to being fluent in Japanese as “going mad.” After living in Japan for a year, they rapidly lost their senses and entered a period of total confusion. Nothing made sense in Japanese or their native language. They dreamed in nonsense. They cobbled together sentences at a much lower level than they spoke before. Their head hurt all the time.

A few days later, they came out of their daze ten times as fluent. They said it was like “rewiring” their brain. Afterwards, they could speak Japanese and English back and forth without having to pause and think about which language they were using. The dream.

Some of you might be nodding along. Creatives have a similar experience where our skills plateau, or even regress. It feels a lot like going mad.

I spent the last two months feeling like that. In June of 2025, I set out to write the first novel I intended to query. (Not my first novel ever—trust me, I have dozens of completed drafts of shelved projects—but the first one I intended to take to a literary agent.) I finished draft four at the end of January 2026 and sent it off to some trusted beta readers for feedback.

Then I went mad. Not from the novel, that was a delight to write and share. But from what came next. I’d taken the time to educate myself on traditional publishing before I started writing to make sure I was interested and willing to pursue it. I knew what I was getting into. What I didn’t realize was how consuming the next part was.

Query letters. Comp titles. Synopses. Loglines.

Eugh, loglines.

I read every resource I could get my hand on. Watched all the videos, scrolled through every subreddit. And sometime in late March of 2026 it all came together. My brain finished rewiring. Except, instead of language fluency, it granted me a single thought:

“Time to make a website.”

So here I am, putting my small stamp on the Internet to introduce myself as a writer. My name is Patrick, some folks call me PJ, and I write commercial sci-fi & fantasy (mostly fantasy, let’s be honest) set in queer normative worlds. My novel, THE EVERWINTER KING, is about a former holy king returning to the home he abandoned in search of his missing god. It’s coming soon to a QueryTracker form near you.

Pictured below: an image of my writing space during draft three edits.