Queried 7/5/24
Historical Romantasy 98k

Queried: 06/18/24
Form rejection 07/15/24

Grateful for the chance!

82k YA Contemporary Mystery

Queried: 3/20 (One of my comps is a book on her MSWL, so I opened my query with that personalization.)
Full Request: 4/8
Sent Full Request: 4/11 (Took me a few days because I was out of the country!)
Offer of Representation: 6/6/2024 (Accepted!)

I can't believe I can finally say, "my agent." I used to read comments in QueryTracker from others who'd had offers and feel such mixed emotions of hope and despair. All I can say now is, don't give up if you truly want this. This is my third manuscript (and it takes me FOREVER--YEARS!--to get a manuscript query ready), and the process has been so full of highs and lows. If I could go back in time and tell myself anything with the experience I have now, it would be that the most important things I was going to have to learn were tenacity and how to handle rejection. I spent so much time working on building writing and storytelling skills that I didn't realize just how much effort and practice the emotional side would take, especially when others around you work so much faster or when things seem easier for them for whatever reason. I'm eventually going to have mountains more to say about querying, but to anyone reading this and feeling the pain of the query trenches, I hope I can validate your experience by saying that what you're doing is practically inhuman; people have evolved to seek out what's easy, and it's unnatural to voluntarily subject ourselves to the kind of pain that comes with wanting to be an artist; setting ourselves up over and over again to get rejections goes against every survival instinct we have. So if you're in the thick of the process now, know that it's normal to feel whatever you're feeling, but you should also feel insanely proud. Truly, it takes a special kind of person to be soft and empathetic enough to want to tell stories about characters that connect with other people, but to also be hard enough to withstand the painful process of getting there.

Q- 7/7/24
YA Fantasy
96K words

Q - 06-12-24
FR - 06-26-24
MG - Contemporary

I appreciate that she took time to consider it.