Rejection

  

Many of you know I sent the first queries out for The Devil You Know.

 

The first three rejections didn’t hurt; even though I only picked agents I thought would be a good fit for the manuscript, there was something off about each of them. In retrospect, I see they were just a smoke screen for the one agent, the wonderful agent, who I think would be perfect. Well, yesterday I received a response from the last of the queries and its a no go for the wonderful agent too.  That’s four out; four down so it’s time to reconsider the query and the first chapter.  

 

Although I realize this is a subjective business, I’m not one who thinks rejection just makes you stronger, it should also make you wiser. If something in the query or first chapter is keeping agents from reading the rest of the book, then I need to determine what.

 

I’m factoring in that this is only four agents out of 80 or so that handle fantasy but coupled with the knowledge that agents are receiving double the submissions of a year ago, it might very well be representative. A hundred a day… Can you image? On twitter the other day, Colleen Lindsey’s goal was to get her inbox down to 300 before she went to bed. She didn’t make it. I don’t think the woman sleeps.

 

Agents are only human and I know after reading fifty or so queries, I’d be much more likely to reject just to get done, unless the query was exceptional.

 

And that’s my point. An exceptional query is what I’m after. So I’m off to consider some serious editing.