Finally, after an interesting course of steroids and most of an antibiotic course, I'm on the road to recovery. I asked the doctor what I had and he shrugged. So...I had something, but he's pretty sure it wasn't pneumonia, anyway. So that journey is just about over. And that's good! It was a bad trip.
I'm also on the agent trail! I'm now officially querying two novels in two very different series, and writing a third. Although the third is a second in one of those series. (I just looked it up, series is the plural of series. Ya gotta love English.)
Another request for a partial came through, so the journey continues. In January, for my YA project, I queried 11 and have 6 rejects from those. In February, so far, 5 queried, no rejects. And then, for the new project, 2 queried.
If no one sees it, no one will offer to represent it.
kayegeorge.com
Hi Kaye,
ReplyDeleteI'm a little confused. Can you query a project that is new? Or is it already completed, perhaps, and I missed that. I can't quite figure out how you did this. Also, since you are at this point unpublished as a novelist, are you struggling with your query letters, happy with them, and have a good bio in them that describes previous contest wins and publications of your short stories? Or are you targeting agents and/or publishers that you've made contact with via conferences, classes, or other writers? (I also want to thank you for not posting regularly on this blog every 2 days. I love how you said in one of your posts that if you set a challenge to write 10,000 words and wrote 8,000, that you changed your goal to 8,000 for the next one so that you ended up with wins and not defeats. I'm pretty sure you're the one who said that, as I'm reading so many of yours today, but if I'm wrong, my heartfelt apologies and my reddest face. My memory is not what it used to be.)
I also see that you've added kayegeorge.com to your signature. Was that part of your journey to create an online presence (between this blog, the other one you started with other mystery writers (or joined), and now your own website? I'm working on that as well, and want to put my blog about me there, using wordpress, which I'm unfamiliar with (you'll see I had a blog a few year back on blogspot (google) and let it lapse until I usurped it for some "prompt" writing for a challenge. I think I should move that off the blog it's on. Any suggestions, advice on your journey onto the internet?
ReplyDeleteSorry this wasn't clear. I only query finished projects. I've taken courses in query letter writing, so eventually became happy with my query letters. I judge my query letters by whether or not I'm getting requests from the letters. If not, I tweak the query until it's working.
ReplyDeleteNext step, if I'm getting requests and sending partials or whole manuscripts and getting rejections, which for me went on for years, I know the project isn't yet good enough.
I've given a talk on "Getting Your Name out There" a few times, on self-promotion. If you'd like a copy, I can send it to you.
BTW, the Guppies are giving a Wordpress class soon. I just signed up, since I think I'll use it for my new pen name, Janet Cantrell.
ReplyDelete