BETWEEN THE LINES

 I think I'm getting the hang of it.  Or at least starting to actually have fun with it.  Scott Carter's blog Selling Your Book: Ten Tips on Creating a Sense of Urgency Among Agents and Editors"  said something about taking on a certain attitude with querying.  I devoted most of my day to researching and querying agents today and decided to take on the attitude of: Just go for it.  No fear, just query anyone who seemed a good fit.  And I decided to start querying via email, since I've never tried before.

So I snail mailed one query and emailed 8 others for my book BEYOND JUSTICE.

The more query letters I wrote, the more confident I became.  This sort of goes with the "dare to be bad" writing mentality.  A freedom that only comes when you aren't afraid (nothing to lose).  Finding that really good, personalized first paragraph is proving the biggest challenge, but when I get it right, it's kind of fun.  I think it was Noah Lukeman who said something to the affect of making the first paragraph all about the agent/editor you are querying.  This makes it immediately important.  I can see that.  If I get an unsolicited email and it's all about the person sending it or the product he/she is trying to sell, my finger hovers over the delete key.  But if this email points out something about me, or my work (in a positive light, of course) you can be sure I'll want to read on.  I guess this is pretty basic.

One agent replied within three hours from an email query and asked me to send her a proposal and 100 page partial!  That was the quickest turnaround I've ever gotten.

Anyway, it's almost 2:30 AM and I just sent off my last query for the day.

I'm not going to get too excited about that one request for a partial, but I am pleased that I did this query blitz.  Recently I've suffered from query block.


PS:  Thanks Scott, you're an inspiration.