Same Day Service

"We apologize for responding with a form letter," says literary agent Richard Parks. No need to apologize. It happens all the time.

"We are taking on few new clients at present and virtually no fiction." That would be the case on the first of November, when the rejection was prepared with my very own name printed by hand in the salutation. My query letter was sent on 28 October. That is same day service, without a doubt.

Can't fault the man for being on top of his in basket. The reply had to have been sent as soon as the query letter was received. But Mr. Parks is not alone in his speed.

From the same batch of queries sent during the Halloween season (suitable time for querying, oddly enough) comes a response from Loretta Barrett. I queried new agent Gabriel Davis, but Ms. Barrett responded with a form rejection. An instant rejection, a no from the moment an intern or a secretary or a clerk opened the letter. "This project did not resonate with me as strongly as I feel it should in order for me to be able to represent it properly," she said in her negative response.

What does it mean, when a literary agent gets back to you so fast it sets your head to spinning? They run an organized office, for one. And your hook sucks. Not doing its job, to generate enough interest to get the agent's eyes all the way through the rest of the query letter, down to the single paragraph synopsis and the closing paragraph. For me, it means the new hook I crafted has to be tossed and a new one born to replace it.

That's a project for another day. I'll take a brief vacation from the manuscript and fire off some short story submissions -- no hook required.