Last year, as the buds began to swell on the trees and the daffodils lifted their leaves out of the once frozen soil, I printed a query letter to Devin McIntyre.
He represents Tim Molloy, author of How To Break Bad News. Since that debut novel was similar to one of my manuscripts, I figured Mr. McIntyre for a good fit. Granted, the novel was panned, and you do get a bit nervous when you compare your brilliance to something that the critics didn't care for, but it was a personalization at any rate.
The letter was stuffed into an envelope and then the SASE was tucked up next to it for company on the long journey to New York.
More than 365 days elapsed and I never saw a sign of the stamped envelope. Until yesterday.
Over one year later, I received the rejection in the mail. If not for the Forever stamp, I might never have received it at all.
My local postmaster is a stickler for detail, and the fact that the postal rates went up Monday means that all correspondence must have proper postage or be returned to sender. No agent would pay the extra two cents and go to all the trouble to send the rejection again.
The use of the Forever stamp meant that I could verify what I had suspected for the previous eleven months. The query did not garner Mr. McIntyre's interest and he would not be asking for a sample of the manuscript.
Fair play to him. At least he responded, albeit in a less than timely manner.
2 comments:
I smiled over your patience with that - I'm philosophical about the whole process too. Some recommend following up on submissions, but I won't do it. It's their loss, I tell myself, if someone better gets the agenting gig because they were quick off the mark. And if it's a rejection, who cares how late it comes? As long as it's wafting around out there, we can choose to believe it's still viable.
Absolutely love your profile. You really speak to me.
That's it, isn't it? We can believe things because we're in the habit of making things up. Do all fiction writers inhabit fictional worlds, do you think?
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