The Next Step

After six months of intense writing, a couple weeks letting it stew, a couple more weeks of major revision, a couple weeks of test readers, and another couple weeks of major revision, the new book is ready to take the next step, out of obscurity and into the light of the publishing world. It's time to put a query letter together and start approaching agents.

This is the part I hate most about being a novelist. Forget about getting published for now; without an agent you won't have a publisher (unless you pay a vanity press to do it for you, no thanks). A query letter is like a resume for your book, stating the premise and themes in an enticing way to make the agent want more. It's a one page make-or-break deal that often brings to mind Stephen King's Pet Sematary.

How does writing a letter mimic a horror novel? I can think of so many ways . . . . Maybe it's more like a boomerang: you throw this great novel out there for the whole world to enjoy, but it flies back and whacks you in the head (or another body part that might seem much more hilarious). Ha! That'll teach you to think you can write the Great American Novel--you and everyone else on the planet. But seriously, sometimes after an agent's rejection, the novel might look the same, but it's somehow different. It doesn't make you as happy anymore, it stares at you funny, it laughs condescendingly from its file on the desktop, and sometimes it can kill the will to write again. Murderer. Voila--Pet Sematary metaphore.

Sending out query letters means persevering through mountains of rejection until you find the one agent who believes in your project. With the first novel I stopped after 10 letters because I saw the flaws the first book presented and decided to fix them before turning every agent against me (you can't resubmit a manuscript to an agent who has refused you, even if you've rewritten the whole entire book--publishing law). This time I'm more confident in my work and have decided to stay in the battle until every agent gets a whack from my boomerang. And if that rejected book flies back to torment me? Well, I've already started on the next project, and it's going to be bigger, badder, and more formidable than anything crawling back from the grave. You agents want a piece of me? Here I come.