Who'd a thunk?
Friday night, my awesome writer friend Michelle Sussman, who is on Twitter, alerted me to the fact that an agent was holding a contest (Through Kathleen Ortiz's Neverending Page Turner Blog). The idea of the contest was that if you submitted to this agent during the one hour window on Saturday, she would be so kind as to give you her absolute honest opinion regarding the book you were presenting.
Now having pretty much struck out so far with my novel, the Green, I figured it couldn't hurt because maybe I could at least glean some helpful information from the NO instead of just the good old 'thanks, but no thanks.' So I entered.
The agent had indicated that she would respond to all queries by Monday at 5PM EST. So at 4PM CST, I was checking and re-checking but I had nothing. I started to panic. Did I put the wrong info in the subject line? Did she have so many she just ran out of time? I decided to check the blog just to see and sure enough, there had been a situation and she would have them done in an hour. So I busied myself doing other things until finally a new message showed up. I prepared myself for the truth, and hopefully some useful information and I got this...
Dear Karly,
This is the 3rd submission I've received in the past few weeks with the title THE GREEN--weird! But it's also the best one--I'd like to see the first 20 pages as a Word doc attachment in Reply to this email.
Thanks for participating,
(Sincerely, Lovely Agent...well, she is)
And so there it is. I've had requests before, but this one just felt nice. It's positive and while there is no promise she'll actually like what I wrote, it's a boost to get a yes every once in awhile, even if it's a small one. I sent off the 20 pages last night, but seeing as she received 240 queries (in ONE hour!) and requested 30, I'm guessing I'll have a long wait to find out if I've moved to the next step, which would be a request for a full manuscript. If not, it was exciting to participate and gives me some validation that I'm in the right profession.
Needless to say, I've since joined Twitter. Thanks again, Michelle!
Now having pretty much struck out so far with my novel, the Green, I figured it couldn't hurt because maybe I could at least glean some helpful information from the NO instead of just the good old 'thanks, but no thanks.' So I entered.
The agent had indicated that she would respond to all queries by Monday at 5PM EST. So at 4PM CST, I was checking and re-checking but I had nothing. I started to panic. Did I put the wrong info in the subject line? Did she have so many she just ran out of time? I decided to check the blog just to see and sure enough, there had been a situation and she would have them done in an hour. So I busied myself doing other things until finally a new message showed up. I prepared myself for the truth, and hopefully some useful information and I got this...
Dear Karly,
This is the 3rd submission I've received in the past few weeks with the title THE GREEN--weird! But it's also the best one--I'd like to see the first 20 pages as a Word doc attachment in Reply to this email.
Thanks for participating,
(Sincerely, Lovely Agent...well, she is)
And so there it is. I've had requests before, but this one just felt nice. It's positive and while there is no promise she'll actually like what I wrote, it's a boost to get a yes every once in awhile, even if it's a small one. I sent off the 20 pages last night, but seeing as she received 240 queries (in ONE hour!) and requested 30, I'm guessing I'll have a long wait to find out if I've moved to the next step, which would be a request for a full manuscript. If not, it was exciting to participate and gives me some validation that I'm in the right profession.
Needless to say, I've since joined Twitter. Thanks again, Michelle!
Hahaha! You're welcome and you deserve it!!! :)
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