First of all, an item of business.
The winner of May's random book, as decided by Random.org:
Jay Eckert!
Congrats, Jay!!! The book you won is The Journey by Robin Hawdon. I just need your address and I'll get your book in the mail to you! My email is tamara at byu dot net.
All right, business is over. Hubby's gone. Doesn't really feel real. I keep thinking he's out of town and coming home soon. It's also nice that this is totally unlike Basic Training, where I didn't hear from him for weeks at a time. He has his phone on him and I can talk to him anytime I want, plus he gets to email me. Hopefully soon we'll be skyping each other.
I'm going to take advantage of this time before baby comes to really get some writing done. I've gotten a few responses back from the queries I sent out for White as Snow, my fairy-tale series. Rejections are interesting beasts. You might know they are coming, but the feeling is still like, "What? You didn't like it??? Are you crazy?" Most rejections are what we call the dreaded FORM LETTER, which says basically, "This isn't a good fit for me, but thanks for sending it and try another agent because this is just my opinion." (I'd be really interested to know if anyone has gotten a rejection that says, "You suck. Stop writing.")
And then sometimes you get a rejection that is constructive. It tells you what the agent really thought and what you might be able to do to improve it. I've gotten two of these. One agent said, "I really enjoyed the sample you sent me, but I'm already representing something similar." Maybe she was just being nice, but I like to think not. This also pretty much confirms my theory that fairy-tale retellings aren't hot right now. I mean, they'll never be dead, but there are a lot of them out there and not a great demand for them. Which is why soon I'll get back to work on the novel I was supposed to write last month.
Another constructive rejection I got from an agent said, "I exclusively represent children's literature, and your 20-year-old protagonist puts this outside the YA range." I have two thoughts on this: 1) There must've been something else he didn't like, or certainly he would've just asked me to change the age of my protagonist. 2) While I don't agree that 20 is outside the YA age, I know a lot of people do. Thus, I've decided to change the age of my protagonist. It is, after all, a fairy tale, and fantasy, and make-believe, so she can still do everything she does, but at a younger age.
And then I did get a request. A request for a full, which surprised me. And caught me off guard, since we were in the middle of wrapping up everything we left for the last minute before DH deployed. But now he's gone, and I'm going to spend today re-reading my full to make sure it is ready to go out.
I am very curious. Anyone have original query responses out there?
All right, business is over. Hubby's gone. Doesn't really feel real. I keep thinking he's out of town and coming home soon. It's also nice that this is totally unlike Basic Training, where I didn't hear from him for weeks at a time. He has his phone on him and I can talk to him anytime I want, plus he gets to email me. Hopefully soon we'll be skyping each other.
I'm going to take advantage of this time before baby comes to really get some writing done. I've gotten a few responses back from the queries I sent out for White as Snow, my fairy-tale series. Rejections are interesting beasts. You might know they are coming, but the feeling is still like, "What? You didn't like it??? Are you crazy?" Most rejections are what we call the dreaded FORM LETTER, which says basically, "This isn't a good fit for me, but thanks for sending it and try another agent because this is just my opinion." (I'd be really interested to know if anyone has gotten a rejection that says, "You suck. Stop writing.")
And then sometimes you get a rejection that is constructive. It tells you what the agent really thought and what you might be able to do to improve it. I've gotten two of these. One agent said, "I really enjoyed the sample you sent me, but I'm already representing something similar." Maybe she was just being nice, but I like to think not. This also pretty much confirms my theory that fairy-tale retellings aren't hot right now. I mean, they'll never be dead, but there are a lot of them out there and not a great demand for them. Which is why soon I'll get back to work on the novel I was supposed to write last month.
Another constructive rejection I got from an agent said, "I exclusively represent children's literature, and your 20-year-old protagonist puts this outside the YA range." I have two thoughts on this: 1) There must've been something else he didn't like, or certainly he would've just asked me to change the age of my protagonist. 2) While I don't agree that 20 is outside the YA age, I know a lot of people do. Thus, I've decided to change the age of my protagonist. It is, after all, a fairy tale, and fantasy, and make-believe, so she can still do everything she does, but at a younger age.
And then I did get a request. A request for a full, which surprised me. And caught me off guard, since we were in the middle of wrapping up everything we left for the last minute before DH deployed. But now he's gone, and I'm going to spend today re-reading my full to make sure it is ready to go out.
I am very curious. Anyone have original query responses out there?
