When I whipped up a new, tasty query and sent off a few copies every couple of weeks until the beginning of November, I foolishly hoped for some sort of response prior to the holiday season. Surely the literary agents clean their offices before departing, I says. The rejections will arrive in a timely manner and I can polish the query during the Christmas break when no one's around to read it anyway.
The mailbox is empty. Christmas season has officially begun.
Nadia Cornier is promising new things to come for Firebrand, according to her new blog, but now I'm starting to believe that the new thing will be the 'no response means no' style of agenting. After the stomach's settled again, that's when the office cleaning will start, do you think?
The local post office sorting station has won the top prize in worst overnight mail delivery, so it can be no surprise that the agents at RLR Associates haven't replied. They might not even have received the snail mailed query sent in the middle of September. The whole batch of queries I sent are all in one sack, stuffed in a corner, to be sorted at the postman's convenience. Pity that Nancy Coffey, Sally Hill McMillan and Margret McBride have all been deprived of a good story. Unless they're not yet done with cleaning out their in-boxes. After the stomach's settled, a reply might be in the mail?
The slowest time to get a response has typically been the weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year's Day, when the publishing industry closes up completely. I'll keep on querying anyway, because I'm tragically addicted to the process, and because I'd like my letter on the top of the pile when the doors open up again in 2008.
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