Help me write a novel I've been researching for 60 years

My GoFundMe campaign is rolling on. It has now reached just under one-third of the target of CAD$20,000.

It’s to keep me alive for a year while I’m writing my second historical novel (the first one, What the Wind Brings, is an award-winner).

I’ve been thinking about To the Ends of the Earth for almost sixty years, since I read a snippet in a book about Alexander the Great that told how, shortly before he died and his empire fell apart, he sent a ship to sail (or mostly row) around Africa (he thought it was just a big island). He was hungry to conquer Carthage and the Greek city-state colonies in southern Italy and Sicily.

Nobody knows what happened to the ship, but I mean to turn it into the center of an epic of derring-do, piracy, intrigue, and treachery. In other words, a rattling good read.

I’ve written the first twenty thousand words and handed them to a literary agent, who is trying to find a publisher for it, but it’s been eleven months and so far no offers. Historical fiction used to be a major genre and, at sixteen, I aspired to join the ranks of popular HF authors like L. Sprague de Camp, Henry Treece, Robert Graves, and Cecelia Holland.

But the genre was later largely taken over by what they called “bodice rippers,” romance novels with a historical setting. So, selling a straight historical novel these days is not easy. It’s especially difficult for a guy like me, who is known as a niche author working in fantasy and space opera.

Still, this will be a labor of love. I would be grateful to anyone who will help me along. If the agent doesn’t get me a deal, I’ll self-publish it as an ebook and POD paperback. One way or another, it will see print.

You can read the opening here, but for some reason Medium.com requires you to swipe and copy the entire URL and paste it into your browser. Otherwise, you end up on their home page:

https://medium.com/@matthewhughes_65934/opening-of-to-the-ends-of-the-earth-558e6df88a91