If you were thinking of sending your query to literary agent Pam Strickler, you're too late. I sent mine already. And she's gone on hiatus because of it.
One look at my letter and she was off to update her submission policy. Even the e-mail address for contacting her has been changed. Any queries sent to the old address will never be seen or read. You can thank me for that.
My skill at driving agents into hiding has been proven once again.
On the heels of that failure, and with so much talk on agent blogs lately about marketing, I re-wrote the query last night. A book that was similar to mine, in that it was historical fiction and dealt with a relationship that had to cross societal barriers, became the source for the synopsis paragraph.
Not that I had to read the book. I read the back flap copy, the marketing pitch that publishers tack on to get a browser to become a buyer. Change a few things, names and minor details, and I'll see how it plays.
As of now, eight hours gone since three e-mail queries were sent, there's been not a single rejection. So far, so good. But Pam Strickler is still not taking queries.
5 comments:
Hang in there! Just keep in mind what we found out--it never happens the way we think it should based on meticulous gathering of data about agents' schedules, habits, mores, and other such things that we then graph, extrapolate, triangulate and turn in to empirical formulae, and then into superstitions (yup, superstitions. There are certain days of the week when I never send anything out to agents. Wednesday.) It's a bit like the global warming science, if yah know what I mean. Ms. Green never answered me. So, there's another glitch in our graph.
However, the disappearing email sounds , uh, bizarre even for an agent. Heck, send it to her other email.
She has a habit of changing the e-mail address for submissions, most likely due to spam.
I suppose I'll send out another batch of queries. There's a rush, like gambling, putting out a wager and thinking this might be a winning hand.
You had your answer from Ms. Green. It was a no-response no.
Re: Ms. Green. Yup. That's what I thought. A non response no. That gives her five minutes of my author's angst. No more. Not enough for her to put a notch on her gun.
Keep playing that hand! Perhaps they should open a new theme casino in Vegas--with a Agent Ride, publish your book slot machines, publisher roulette, delusional craps...
OK, onward and forward. I feel like writing something totally brainless today. Something about change... :)
I'm in holiday weekend mode. Did my writing for the day, plan to leave work early (which won't happen) and not worry about the small things.
No matter what the agents do, I still enjoy writing so why quit.
One rejection as of 7/9, but someone at InkWell Management was intrigued enough to go to my website and check out the writing sample.
That was four hours ago, and there's no request for more pages in the e-mail box. So that leaves the writing, which means the first page needs another re-write.
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