Success Story Interview - A.P. Golub

An Interview with A.P. Golub (slothcat on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Allegra Martschenko of Ladderbird Literary Agency.

12/26/2024

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?

A.P. Golub:
Necromancer Project (totally official name) is an adult fantasy with romantic elements about a necromancer bodyguard struggling to protect a politician while their past, their enemies, and their growing feelings threaten to catch up with them.
My last project featured a very kind, mostly nice main character, so some of the motivation with this one was wanting to write a MC who was more of an ass, but funny.

QT: How long have you been writing?

A.P. Golub:
There’s a direct line from a story I drafted in kindergarten about a wheel who killed everyone so then they had no friends left and were very sad to this current project.
More seriously, I started writing with an eye to publication in 2012, so a little over a decade. The road was certainly filled with bumps; this was the third project I’ve queried.

QT: How long have you been working on this book?

A.P. Golub:
This is tricky as an early draft of this project got derailed when current events decided to copy my original plot, leading to an entire redraft of a complete manuscript. I’m not sure the current book is close enough to that draft to count. Let’s just say roughly 2021 (so about two years before I queried) and not dwell on what was lost.

QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?

A.P. Golub:
There are degrees of giving up. While drafting this project, I certainly had moments where I thought I should trunk it and move on, but I stuck with it mostly because of sunk cost fallacy (that worked out!). I had also made my peace with reevaluating what I wanted from a writing “career” after I finished querying this project, under the assumption I wouldn’t get an agent offer. Writing isn’t a linear process, and giving up is a part of growing. Sometimes we have to give up on certain projects or goals to better assess what we want as a writer and where our skills are.
Now, giving up on writing entirely—that never crossed my mind and I’m not sure I’m capable of it.

QT: Is this your first book?

A.P. Golub:
Nope. It’s my third that I consider up to professional/near-professional standards. There was another mess of a monstrously sized epic fantasy before that, but I’m not sure it ever really ended concretely enough to count.

QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

A.P. Golub:
I took a fair number of creative writing courses in college and was an English Lit major—I think critical analysis of texts is immensely helpful to building writing skills. Later, I attended Viable Paradise Writers’ Workshop. I try to enroll in occasional day classes though orgs like Clarion or local organizations near me. I love a good class.

QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?

A.P. Golub:
Not really. I try to write as much as I can when I can. I also take breaks when needed.

QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?

A.P. Golub:
There was the one massive extenuating circumstances new plot, same characters overhaul. With the new version, it went through about three rounds of edits.

QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

A.P. Golub:
Yesss and I love them!

QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?

A.P. Golub:
My heart is a gardener, but my brain demands I outline.

QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?

A.P. Golub:
I started querying this one in Autumn 2023, so it was about a year. My last project I queried in fits and starts between 2017-2019, with a few much later queries thrown in for good measure. My first project I only queried for about half a year back in 2016.

QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?

A.P. Golub:
74

QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?

A.P. Golub:
I confirmed that they were at reputable agencies, repped my genre, and checked for wish lists. I went pretty broad, though.

QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?

A.P. Golub:
I did, but only if I really had something specific to include as personalization. I worried a lot less about that than I did back in 2018 with the last project

QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?

A.P. Golub:
Once more unto the breach!
Besides persistence, I do wish I had been much more mindful of market while developing the plot of Necromancer Project. While I am pretty well read across current adult fantasy, I could have gone another layer and really probed at how my novel was meshing up against current trends, for better or for worse. Don’t chase market trends but do pay attention to them.

Query Letter:

Dear (AGENT NAME),
THE NECROMANCER’S GUIDE TO REVOLUTION (115,000 words) is an adult fantasy novel about politics and personal growth. It brings together the revolutionary setting of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s CITY OF LAST CHANCES with a different take on necromancy reminiscent of C.S.E. Cooney’s SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER. (PERSONALIZATION)
Ten years ago, Master Necromancer Luka Peran assassinated one of the empire’s magical rulers in the hopes of spurring on a revolution. Instead, it collapsed. Since then, Luka has rebuilt their life: extricating themselves from their abusive instructor, shelving their most radical ideas, and falling in love with Tanni Abadish, a reformist politician. Life’s good, until Luka’s former instructor, now a scheming politician, assigns Tanni to the empire’s war-torn coastal region. Tanni and his reforms would be out of parliament, except Luka intervenes, taking the assignment to protect Tanni and his vision of a better future for all magic users, even necromancers.
On the coast, Luka rescues Chel, a twenty-year-old necromancer with an all-too-familiar radical streak. However, instead of Luka bringing the younger necromancer home to safety, they return to an increasingly dire situation, with Tanni’s supporters being attacked in the streets and prominent guild-mages disappearing. Chel quickly falls in with more hot-headed crowds, to Luka’s chagrin. When magical elites bent on maintaining the status quo—and its mistreatment of necromancers—come for Tanni and his entire political party, Luka is once again faced with rising tides of revolution. Luka’s biggest problem is keeping their young protégé from repeating their mistakes, until Tanni goes from reformist to revolutionary.
(MY DEETS)