Public Slushpile

I was one of the lucky few to be chosen by the Bot for the Public Slushpile going on over at Miss Snark's First Victim! This means that my query for DAUGHTER OF THE MOON is posted HERE and you are all invited to head over and evaluate it :) Here are the rules (taken from Authoress' blog):

• NO CRITIQUING THE QUERIES!
• Each comment needs to begin with YES or NO, followed by one sentence (one!) explaining why.
• One comment per reader.
• Comments that do not begin with YES or NO will not be included in the final tally.
• The 5 queries with the most YES responses will be invited to submit their first 500 words for critique.

As for your "yes" and "no" reasons:  Try to encapsulate the main strong or weak point of the query into your sentence so that it is as helpful as possible to the author.

GOOD: 

NO.  I could not determine what the main conflict of your protagonist is.

YES.  You've taken a tried-and-true premise and given it a unique twist that makes me want to read more.

NOT SO GOOD:

NO.  Your main character's name reminds me of my ex-husband.

YES.  Wow! Awesome! I read this before and I've also line-edited your manuscript twice, as you know (hee hee!), so of COURSE you also already know that THIS QUERY ROCKS and you're the BESTEST!

Have fun! Voting will be open until 9:00 am EDT on Thursday.  Winners will be announced later that morning.

I hope you'll all head over and participate :) And if your query made it into the slushpile too, let us know which is yours in the comments!

Query Time!

I've been working on getting my Agent Tracker Spreadsheet updated so I'm strategically ready to send out queries for DAUGHTER OF THE MOON. I thought I'd share my process with you and ask the writers out there about your processes as well.

1) Create the spreadsheet template:

2) Find the agents to fill in the list. I've compiled my list based on information from The Agent Spotlight at Literary Rambles, checking my favorite author blogs/websites to see who represents them, using lists of agents who participate in blog and Twitter pitch contests like the ones on Miss Snark's First Victim (contests are a really great way to see what sort of material the agents are interested in), and Agent Query. Then, once I have my list, I check the Bewares, Recommendations, and Background Check Forum on Absolute Write to see what sort of information about the agents comes up. I try to fill up the list with at least 50 agents.

3) Now that I have my list, I check the official website for each agent and copy their submission guidelines, average response time, and what they are looking for into my spreadsheet. I also paste their website into the "Additional Info" column.

4) After this, I do some in depth research on each agent. I check to see if they have a blog, twitter account, or recent interviews. I use these resources to find the most up-to-date info on what the agent is looking for and what their personal tastes are. If I can find a list of their favorite books at the moment, and my manuscript is comparable in some way to one of those books, perfect! I'll mention this in the query. Any of this sort of information which will help me to personalize the query will go into the "additional info" column.

5) I send out queries in batches of 10. I have an idea of which agents are my "dream agents" and I don't include all of them in a single go. I like to stratify the batches accordingly and wait for feedback on the first batch (just in case my query is bombing out there) before I send out another. If I don't receive a single positive response, then I might tweak my query before I send out the next batch.

That's it! How does your process compare? Is there anything you would do differently?

Was it me, or was it you?

Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires.


This post is about rejection. Having a manuscript rejected doesn't make anybody happy, but that's not exactly what this is about. As a writer, you expect a certain amount of rejection (the majority of the feedback a manuscript receives will likely be in the form of rejection). And I do. I crave it actually, so I can find the problems in my work and fix it.


The thing is, there often isn't a specific reason for the rejection. And even if there is, it's rare to find a literary agent who has the time (or isn't so scarred by backlash received from writers he/she was trying to help) to share the specific reason for rejection. Most often, the response received will be some form of the sentence, "It just wasn't right for me, but I'm sure there's another agent out there who it would be right for." This could mean anything from, "Wow, that was the worst POS I've ever read, but I just don't have the heart to tell you" to "You didn't follow the submission guidelines" to "The piece is well-written and the premise isn't bad, but I just don't feel like your genre is selling right now".


And this is frustrating. I don't want to send out a query that isn't working to all the agents on my list and then have them all pass on my manuscript. But, if I don't send out my query to a large number of agents at once, then how will I ever reach enough people to overcome the subjectivity factor? How do I know if I just need to keep sending it out there until I find "the one" or if there is actually something fundamentally wrong with my query? What do you all you writers out there think about this - agree? disagree? What have your query experiences been?


And in case you're wondering about my inspiration for this post - I'm getting ready to start querying DAUGHTER OF THE MOON, and I've been entering contests to test the water. The first contest, March Madness Agent Pitch, didn't go so well and I didn't make it into the agent-judged round. I've entered another one over at Cupid's Lit Connection, so we'll see how that goes!