A Matter of Queries and Representation

What a week and a half it's been!

I apologize in advance for any meandering, poor spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors you may find in this post. I don't sleep well on a normal day (what is a normal day anyway?). The past 10 days my abilities to ward off restful sleep have been exceptional. This is a superpower you do NOT want.

Before I get into my big news (and it's big, let me tell you, it's BIG), let me give you a bit of background.

I don't query randomly. Every single agent that I've ever queried is someone that I genuinely think would be a great fit for both my writing and, more importantly, me. That's of course all based on the limited information I can gather by Googling, reading interviews, stalking on Twitter, and chatting them up.

There are a LOT of fantastic agents out there, of all stripes (and spots, and paisley, and I suppose houndstooth...).

That said, everything has to click in both directions. I have enough rejections from those same agents citing "wonderful writing/world building/characters/other words describing stories" but they just didn't "make the connection" (or some variant thereof) to wallpaper my office and some surrounding surfaces.

They came fast and fairly consistently at first. I'd query, and then receive a rejection the next day or week.

I went back and rewrote my base query letter (I tweaked it a little for every agent). Responses went from generic forms to personalized responses (not all of them, but some). I even had a few requests for partial submissions.

Following that path I continue to tweak and tinker my query, all the while continuing to get further input on CROW'S BLOOD from my awesome Alpha/Beta Readers (including my wonderful wife, who put up with so MANY drafts) and Critique Partners (Colten,
Rachel, and Clare) and worked to make it better.

I entered CROW'S BLOOD in contests. You know the best part about contests? The community and support that comes out of them. They're a fixed point. Everyone entering is (in theory) at the same point of their writing process and/or career as you are. They know what you're going through, they're doing it too.

Renee Ahdieh chose to mentor me in Brenda Drake's Pitch Wars. With her helpful pokes and prods I polished CROW'S BLOOD even further. Trimming out a few scenes that were so necessary in my head (I'd done so much world building to support them!) that weren't actually needed in the book. She's also a master at spotting my Shatner Commas and teaching me to identify them as well (I've removed 3 from this paragraph alone).

Last week I got wind of an agent I really liked reading my full... MY FULL!!! Excitement warred with dread. What if he didn't like it? What if I didn't stick the landing? I wanted to scream (politely) "If you find anything drastic, I'll fix it!". But I didn't. Because I am a professional! (stop laughing!)

I waited, and slept poorly, and waited.

Thursday was a normal day (there's that "normal" word again). Things teetered on the edge of going oh-so-perfectly and/or blowing up spectacularly at my day job. I was packing up to go home when my phone sounded the "email in the writing mailbox" notification (it doesn't say that, but it is distinctive).

It was an Offer of Representation! He wanted to have "The Call".

I hyperventilated for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life. I had an offer! From an agent!!! I remember thinking "Ok I need to get my head on straight before I reply so I don't come off as a complete idiot..." I barely remember the drive home.

After dinner (I have no idea what, or if, I ate) I painstakingly crafted my reply. It took me 35 minutes to write and edit that email.

"I'd love to chat." (I'm paraphrasing, but that was about the level of awesome I was functioning at). We scheduled for the next morning.

The call was awesome. I acted like a complete noob while trying to be all professional and cool. The agent in question handled the situation like I was a sane and perfectly functioning adult.

He answered all of my questions and asked a few of his own (which I think/hope I answered).  I let him know I had some other Fulls out and needed a week to get those settled before I signed (because it's the right thing to do), which he was completely cool with. We ended the call, and I sat there, stunned, for a good 30 minutes before reaching out to the other agents with my full.

Here we are, a week after that call. I've badgered several agents with questions and clarifications, and I've communicated and settled everything with each and every agent that had my full, a partial, or even a query. I won't go into details on all of that here, they're not the point.

Today, I'm proud/pleased/excited to say:

I am now represented by Leon Husock of the L. Perkins Agency!

P.S. Leon said to save some of my celebratory antics for when we sell CROW'S BLOOD.
To which I say:
Leon, this is nothing. When that happens, the world won't know what hit it!

I'm going to sleep now.

The 777 Blog Hop

In what can only be described as cold-brewed wanton and impish revenge for calling him out in my ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Colten Hibbs has tagged me in the 777 Blog Hop.

Those who have been tagged have to open their current work-in-progress (WIP), and go to the 7th line of the 7th page and post the next 7 lines.

My current work in progress is a Sci-Fi Noir Detective story I'm affectionately giving the working title "Sci-Fi Noir Detective Story". It's on it's Zero-Draft.

If you're unfamiliar with that term Zero-Draft, it's the very first, very rough draft that's written at the beginning of any project. It'll be full of holes, notes, dead ends, incomplete arcs, crappy repetitive language, eye-bleedingly-bad punctuation and prose, and worst of all... stilted dialog!

After spinning my wheels on some of the characterization and motivation (which will all change by the end of the Zero-Draft), I'm about ~6,500 words ( ~26 pages) into actual writing, and about 1/10th of the way through my outline.

I'm a sparse writer, beginning with a skeletal framework and layering description on top of it, so my manuscripts tend to remain relatively spare through several revisions. Luckily, the 7 lines that this Blog Hop highlights aren't affected much.

Without further ado:

 The speaker, Kats wasn’t sure whether she was Cross or Cork, let out a long breath. “Out of the ordinary? That’s Incidental territory. Those bastards wouldn’t know ordinary if it landed on their dinner table. 

The Nature’s Path, or Incidentals as their detractors called them, were a decades old movement that denied the benefits of genetic enhancement and error correction. They’d swelled in numbers for the first twenty years or so, then levelled off at around four percent of the population. Very few Incidentals ever held jobs higher than bottom rung maintenance positions. 

Despite their relatively similar social status, Tankers like Kats were as far removed from the Nature’s Path as it was possible to be.

Anything in that passage is subject to change, in whole or in part. I may even remove it from my manuscript with fire and brimstone at any time of my choosing.