Dude.

I'd write more. If I had something to write about. I'm in transit. A lady in waiting. On the sidelines. Insert your own cliche here. More queries are out, and I'm just plugging away. The agent who requested my partial is at a huge book fair in London, along with the hundreds of other US agents who decided to peruse the European market, so there's quite a lull going on in the aspiring writer world. So I'm going to continue tapping my fingers, eating the leftover chocolate bunny from my daughter's Easter basket, and looking up other agents in the hopes to annoy the hell out of them with my query. Which, after 6 rewrites of what I thought was the master copy, is pretty darn good...finally.

A Little Fishy

So I guess the query worked-a fish has nibbled. An agent has requested a partial. Now- note-for the record- I am not bouncing off of walls, not super-excited and losing control. Yes, my heart is a-flutter with visions of acceptance, proposals, contracts, book deals, etc.; however, this time, I'm playing it cool. I'm going to look over my partial another time, make sure it's perfect (again), and then take another day to carefully craft a good cover letter and prevent any stupid mistakes.

My first knee-jerk reaction to my "Cool Hand Luke" front was that I'm setting myself up for rejection again. You know, trying to ease the pain by not getting my hopes up. But it's not that at all. I know my manuscript is good. I know I write well. I know there is an agent out there who will love my characters as much as I love them. So I quickly pushed that familiar nagging in me aside and realized that my best bet is to be confident. I have nothing to lose. So I'm going in with this head high.

Wish me luck. This is a frickin' big agent. Like, HUGE. Like EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS PERSON. oh god...my heart is starting to pound. I gotta go before I start hyperventilating.

My latest query

So I wrote this query that I finally liked. Trust me, writing queries is like having a hot sauce enema. It's just not something anybody looks forward to. And now that I've had 4 hot sauce enem-er, I mean, written 5 different query templates, I'm just looking forward to the cooling off period. Of course, almost every query is personalized to each agent, meaning that I've either mentioned a book that they have represented that I have either read or think my manuscript is similar in theme, or I have sucked up to them in such a way that they know I've done my homework. I think that's the most important thing here. It's doing the homework. I've spent hours just looking up agent names, backgrounds, companies, recent sales to publishing houses- it's enough to make me vomit. I can tell you which agent recently left one company because they were seduced by another lit agency. I can tell you which agent recently got married. I can tell you which agent seems to spend more time "tweeting" than physically possible. Do I try to convey in my query that I've been researching [stalking] them? No, but I write my letter with as much wit and professionalism as possible that it obvious to them that I'm not some shmuck who's writing on a wing and prayer and just sending off random queries at her leisure.

Anyway, we'll see what happens with my most recent queries that went out last week. I'm taking time off today for cooking for Passover dinner tonight with the in-laws, and taking a moment to dance to Mickey Mouse's "Hot Dog" dance with my kid.

Sorry......

In the middle of writing more queries, I got caught up in the 2009 NHL Playoff Challenge Pool. My bad. I've been spending the last hour scouring NHL.com, gettin' giddy and wide-eyed at the possible playoff contenders. I'll write tomorrow with something more substantial than my hockey fantasies. :)