When I discovered that someone at Park Literary Group had dropped by my website, I had a sense that the query was doing its work.
Why else would Amanda Cardinale, or her assistant, have gone to the trouble?
But then I saw that whoever had come to call had only stayed for a very short time. That meant that the opening of the manuscript didn't grab their attention. The whole first chapter is posted, and it takes more than sixty seconds to read ten pages.
No request for more material appeared in the e-mail box the next day, or the day after, or after that. My instincts told me that there would be a rejection.
My instincts have grown sharp with time. The little postcard-sized rejection slip arrived today, a couple of weeks after the visit to the website.
I can make myself feel better by imagining that Ms. Cardinale liked what she saw in the first paragraph, but she was voted down by the other agents in the group. I can be realistic and accept the fact that she didn't like my story or the way I string words together.
So it's off to wait on more responses to the query, and to wait on two other agents who are reviewing the first three chapters. My instincts tell me that it's not going to be good news. There's too much silence for too long a period of time.
2 comments:
Oh, I feel so bad for you. We become strange fortune-telling, tea-leaf swirling, witchey types, trying to fathom why, who and for how long was this person looking.
I even think Stephen King looked at me once. I think I'm becoming a bit peculiar.
Not that I'd really give up a good plot, but it would make for a really creepy mystery, right? If the looker was some sort of real-life stalker...
Of course, of late, I'm the stalker, checking people's blogs to see where they're from, then checking that against the tracking thing.
Sorry, but I just wanted to say you're not alone. Read my blog for yesterday (Prof Ostrom's poem) for a good laugh on this rejection business...
Ah now, none of that. We'll have a gin fizz or two (or five) and laissez les bonnes temps roulez.
Lent starts tomorrow and there's time enough for sorrow in the next forty days.
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