Two Texts and an Email
And an author's eternal question
Hey. Sorry about last week.
I don’t want you to think I forgot about you. In fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’ve been thinking about you and trying to squeeze in a little newsletter time for over a week now. I was on vacation, though, until Wednesday (if you can call any trip with a toddler a vacation), and since then I’ve been trying to catch up.
Last weekend, I took this little newspaper I do to my town’s … fair, I guess? It was a super fun day, but it was also 100 degrees out, like it’s been for most of the last several weeks (thank goodness for our brief respite up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where it was a chilly 86.), and it was a LONG DAY.
Anyway. No excuses, just explanations. I’ve missed this place and have been wondering which of the fifteen million ideas that have swirled around in my head in the last two weeks I’ll write about, and then of course something happens to blow all those other ideas outside the window. This is what I need to tell you today:
Nothing makes sense.
Nothing is easy, everything is complicated, and most things that happen to us are some mixture of good and bad, but rarely one or the other.
It starts with a text:
Finished the book yesterday…LOVED IT! Compelling, totally pulled me in and I couldn’t wait to keep reading. Great character development, awesome suspense/twists and turns. Such a parallel to what’s happening right now. You have to get this published!!
Me: 🤩🎉😁
And then, a day later, another:
Loving your book!!! I’m in awe of this world you’ve created. I was pulled from the first chapter. I can see this being a movie.
Me: 🥰😄🎊
Sandwiched in between, an email:
While your writing is strong and I’m hopeful your book will find a good home, I can’t see a clear path for placing this book in the market, and so I’m going to have to pass.
Me: 🤯😫😭
Okay, so rejection is nothing new. I’ve been querying this project (sending it out to agents) since May of 2021. Or before that? I truly can’t remember and am too lazy to open my spreadsheet (yes, of course I have a spreadsheet) and check. I have been rejected by maybe 20 agents. At least ten others haven’t bothered to respond at all.
But the juxtaposition of the glowing feedback I get from beta readers with the growing pile of rejections I get from agents just doesn’t seem to square. And that particular rejection is one I’ve gotten at least five times. Which begs the question(s):
Is this just one of many generic rejections agents send writers?
Is there something wrong with my submissions package? Might my cover letter, synopsis, and first 5-10 pages be doing a bad job selling what the book is? (TBH I think I don’t do a great job selling what the book is, so maybe?)
Is this a sign the book is never going to be marketable in a traditional publishing world?
Luckily, I will have the chance to ask two different agents all these questions in a few weeks. Question 1, I really can’t do anything about. But at least hopefully these ladies will be straight with me and tell me if this is a generic rejection or if I really should consider (Question 3) where this book will be most successful.
Question 2, I’m working on this week.
The opening chapters are rewritten. The entire book is re-edited, polished, and ready to send off to the perfect agent and then the perfect editor at the perfect publishing house (if it gets that far). I’m proud of the book and the opening pages, and moreover I’m satisfied with it. I’m not going to change it unless a big fancy editor at a big fancy publishing house gives me a good reason to do so.
The synopsis (which is a summary of the entire plot, including spoilers, twists and turns, and the ending!), until yesterday, was a mess. Well, not exactly a mess - just not exactly what it needed to be. It was too dark, too technical, too dystopian. This book, at its heart, is a women’s fiction X detective novel. Yes, it happens in a near-future society. Yes, it has some speculative and dystopian elements. But it’s not some barren futurescape. It’s a functioning society where certain things are just a bit … off from what we’re used to. So “In a world where…” is not a great place to start. No, in this kind of book you’re chronicling the characters’ journey. So you start with the characters. The new beginning is much better:
Since she was born, Lucinda’s life has been devoted to her Sisters. From teaching them the amazing things their bodies can do to caring for them as family and supporting them through pregnancy and childbirth, Lucinda is the compass her Sisters look to for guidance. All this work is done in secret, of course, because pregnancy and childbirth are illegal.
A little bit of the world, yes. Enough to get the sense that Lucinda isn’t living in today’s world. But character first. Synopses are notoriously hard to write, and most agents don’t even ask for them, but it’s an important step in really defining the feel of the book at a glance.
And then there’s the query letter, which I’ve also spent literal days on. I will do some quick edits on that today, and it’s unlikely the letter itself will need many changes. Of all the components of a submissions package, that one was written most with the right frame of reference. (Although, that’s the thing agents are reading when they say they don’t know where they’d position the book in the marketplace, so maybe I’m wrong…?)
All this work, and in three weeks I might decide, based on the feedback from the agents with whom I meet, that the only way this book makes it out into the world is if I self-publish it. I’ve told you before I have a timeline, and that timeline might end up being condensed a bit, just based on the timeliness of the themes. Acquisitions are already announcing publication dates of 2024, for goodness’ sake. This book needs to be in people’s hands long before 2024. (In my humble opinion.)
Anyway, there’s everything you never knew you needed to know about querying a novel. I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me, and I’m excited to know I’ve got a team behind me ready to shout the book’s name from the rooftop (when I finally reveal the book’s name, that is. 😉)
That’s it for now. I hope you enjoy my beautiful vacation collage below.
