Dashboard Literary Agents Success Story Interviews Andrea Corsi

Success Story Interview - Andrea Corsi

An Interview with Andrea Corsi (AndreaCorsi on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent James Mustelier of The Bent Agency.

04/08/2026

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?: Andrea Corsi:
The Relived Life of Herman Rue is about an elderly widower who discovers time travel is as simple a picture and being in the place it was taken. He sets out to relive his life's greatest moments picture by picture, but in doing so he changes his present in irreversible ways. He must discover the true source of his time traveling abilities before his present becomes unrecognizable, and with fading memories, the past is no longer relivable.

Inspiration for this story came from a lot of places: a song that got stuck in my head on loop (The Cure, Pictures of You); People in my life (If you've ever known a Herman Rue, someone who is strong willed, a bit curmudgeonly, but with a soft sentimental center, you're very lucky); and a random social media reel that left me bawling about two penguins, bonded through a lifetime together, and when one passed away the other went "looking" for them and got me thinking, what would this kind of love look like in a person?
QT: How long have you been writing?: Andrea Corsi:
I know it sounds cliche, but I've been a writer for the majority of my life. I was the middle school kid who hated research papers so I took the information and moulded it into a story (and still got an A). In high school I was editor of the Literary Magazine (a position I had no right holding being that commas are my weakness) and I wrote my first "book" in 1998 when I was fifteen and tried to submit it to publishers (which goes to show I've been getting rejected for the majority of my life as well.) I majored in Creative Writing alongside Psychology in college, which is a great combination for creating and understanding on the line level very complicated protagonists and upon graduation I promptly stopped writing for almost twenty years. During that time, I wrote only very serious psychological reports as a school psychologist, got married, had babies, and generally stopped sleeping for nearly a decade. After Covid, I was not one of those "I wrote a book during lockdown!" people, but instead the kids finally went back to school, I dug out some of my old writing which ended up not being entirely bad, and rekindled a dream with a simple thought of, maybe I can do this again.
QT: How long have you been working on this book?: Andrea Corsi:
I started writing The Relived Life of Herman Rue in October 2024, finished the first draft by January 2025, and have been working on revisions, edits, more revisions and more edits that will continue with my agent through April 2026.
QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?: Andrea Corsi:
Finding success through querying requires a certain level of delusion. I doubted, of course. Considered self-publishing, because that's a great route. I took breaks between querying projects and in the middle of it. But there was never once I entertained the idea that the pieces wouldn't fall into place. Although the fine print of that delusion, the belief that success would happen, was never in a single book. Herman Rue is a fantastic book but I can always write another (and I have ten times over) but the delusional belief that never waivered, was in myself.
QT: Is this your first book?: Andrea Corsi:
The Relived Life of Herman Rue is my eighth book.

There were great books before Herman. Books that weren't so great but served as lessons for writing books before Herman and there are two other books beyond Herman. Writing is a muscle. You become a stronger writer by writing (and learning about writing through classes, webinars, conferences, craft books, fellow writer friends and on and on and on).
QT: Do you have any formal writing training?: Andrea Corsi:
I studied Creative Writing in college but I was honest the majority of the craft I've learned has been through webinars led by agents and other writers, conferences, and surrounding myself with other talented people, and of course, reading for the craft. Degrees are great, but the learning is in the work.
QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?: Andrea Corsi:
As a neurodivergent writer I love schedules. Typically I am an early morning writing person and this is where I do my best first draft or rewriting work. My brain is fresh and fully caffeinated and hopefully the house is still quiet. Afternoons are better for editing, query work that can be interrupted, or reading (beta reading for a writer friend or other writing critique group work). At night my brain is tired so that means reality television or reading before bed (which typically is a book I'm researching for a comp or a book recommendation by a friend).
QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?: Andrea Corsi:
After finishing the first draft, I let it rest and started another writing project because I love juggling books and I love adding more writing work. After a bit of time, it went through a few rounds of self editing (going back and filling in the skipped scenes, adding scenes/ deleting scenes). After I sent it to two of my alpha readers to read for big picture things, and with their feedback, more self editing. Then I sent it to my beta readers, and then more self editing. I started querying in July 2025 but by October 2025 I did a round of revisions based on agent feedback trends. This revision process included another round with my betas as well.
QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?: Andrea Corsi:
Absolutely.

Good beta readers are essential to a successful project because they see the story in ways you, as the writer, never can (as a reader).
QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?: Andrea Corsi:
I'm somewhere in the middle (having a good foundational understanding of story structure). I know my starts. I know my middle beat that changes everything. I know my ending. When I start writing, I write to fill in the blanks, but around 50k to 60k words it starts feeling like I need to figure out how to land this airplane and that is the only time I outline to wrap everything up and get to the ending I already know. That's not to say I don't plot afterward, which involves a fun amount of colored post-its to polish up my structure. But I suppose, personally I need to fly by the seat of my writer pants for awhile and have fun with the creative discovery, which might seem backwards but I'm never afraid of the work my meandering might create for later.
QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?: Andrea Corsi:
I started querying this book in July 2025, paused querying in October 2025, restarted querying in January 2026 and got my offer of representation in March 2026.

I queried three books before this one. The first book I queried wasn't ready to query. I started in April 2023 and stopped in July 2023 after a very nice agent I'd met at a conference gave great feedback on a full and opened my eyes to the fact the book and the structure wasn't working. I scrapped the whole thing and ended up rewriting it. Total queries sent: 23. Rejections: unrecorded (I didn't have my handy spreadsheet yet) Requests: 2 Offers:0

The second book I started querying in October 2023 and stopped in April 2024. Total queries sent: 54 Rejections: 14 CNR: 37 Requests: 3 Offers: 0

The third book I queried was my completely rewritten first attempt at querying book. I started in May 2024 and stopped querying in April 2025. Rejections:97 Requests: 7 R&Rs: 1 Offers:0
QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?: Andrea Corsi:
87
QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?: Andrea Corsi:
Querying is a lot of work and a lot of research goes into choosing an agent. An important resource was the premium QT stats (has the agent requested anything recently? Are the genres they are requesting my genre? Are their response times fast/ slow/ at all? Comments from other querying authors), Publisher's Marketplace (have they had any recent deals? Are those deals in my genre? What editors/ imprints have they worked with?), MSWL (do they want a book like my book?) Podcasts/ interviews/ blogs/ substacks (is this a person I would like to work with someday?)
QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?: Andrea Corsi:
Yes but I didn't recreate the wheel. A friendly greeting and the reason why I chose them sufficed.
QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?: Andrea Corsi:
Querying is very slow, until it's not. You're staring down the barrel of an unknown amount of time. Your inbox is quiet and you're contemplating if your book is terrible, will never find a place on a shelf, and your career life choices. You know a rejection even before you open it because your eye instinctively knows through the veil of the nice form letter about subjectivity and not rightness where the pass is. You see on social media what appears to be the whole world celebrating offers (and lots of them), full requests, and publisher market place six figure deals. You wonder what you're doing wrong, set end points, and take a lot of long walks to heal from it all. But the old saying, you only need one yes, is the truest thing in querying and the terrifyingly hopeful part is that yes comes out of the blue. But the only way to get there is to stay.

So my advice? Stay.
QT: Would you be willing to share your query with us?: Andrea Corsi:
Certainly :)

Success Story Interview - Andrea Corsi

Query Letter: