Dashboard Literary Agents Success Story Interviews Elsie Raymond

Success Story Interview - Elsie Raymond

An Interview with Elsie Raymond (CRKellogg on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Claire Friedman of InkWell Management.

11/02/2026

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?: Elsie Raymond:
Chain Reaction is a STEMinist romance set in space, pitched as Ali Hazelwood meets Andy Weir. After their ship falls through a spatial anomaly, two rival scientists must find a way to work together if they're going to get their ship and crew home alive. But as their relationship turns combustible, they learn that they might not hate each other as much as they thought.

This was a book where the premise and a single image - that of my scientists in space traveling through this anomaly - came to me first. I knew I wanted to write about scientists because I love learning about the women scientists throughout history who have not gotten the recognition they deserve for their discoveries. The worldbuilding, plot, romance all scaffolded off of that initial inspiration.
QT: How long have you been writing?: Elsie Raymond:
Previously, I wrote creative non-fiction and worked in journalism. But I seriously started writing fiction six years ago almost to the day.
QT: How long have you been working on this book?: Elsie Raymond:
I started this book in May of 2025. I finished the second full rewrite of it in May of 2026 and then started revising, beta reads, and working on my query package until I began querying in August of 2026. So, all told, about a year and a half.
QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?: Elsie Raymond:
Yes. I started writing this book while I was querying my last book. I had put so much time and effort and love into that old project and it was going nowhere. It gave me the yips while I was writing this book. All that pressure made it really hard for me to be free enough with this book to let it breathe. There was nothing really to do but work through it and keep trying.
QT: Is this your first book?: Elsie Raymond:
No. I wrote and queried a previous novel that now lives in a drawer. I also wrote several books that I knew weren't any good and never queried. I maintain that none of those projects were wasted time though because they taught me so many valuable skills.
QT: Do you have any formal writing training?: Elsie Raymond:
I attended the Viable Paradise workshop which was a big inflection point for me in taking my craft and myself seriously. For many years I was a voracious consumer of classes, panels, and craft talks. I've also collected a great group of mentors over the years.
QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?: Elsie Raymond:
I'm a mom so my routine often changes based on the schedules of my kids. But when I am drafting on a project, I either wake before they do, usually around 5am, in order to write for a couple of hours or I write after they go to bed for a couple of hours. I use social obligations, like weekly writing dates or my critique group, to make myself maintain regular writing blocks.
QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?: Elsie Raymond:
Revision is my hobby-horse so apologies for a long answer here.

I wrote a zero draft/very rough outline in six weeks. Then I stopped, reassessed some things and wrote a very sloppy 80k first draft over three months. I sent the opening chapters to my crit group and they eviscerated them. Then I reverse outlined my whole book, going scene by scene to make sure each scene had critical components: that I was building tension, that scenes had goals and complications, that the overall structure felt satisfying. Then I began rewriting the book from scratch following my outline, paying more attention to my prose.

I gave new opening chapters to a different crit partner and they still were not hooking. I rewrote them again, gave them to a new set of beta-readers. Still not working. Rewrote them again, focusing on the major things I needed my characters to grapple with in the book from the get-go, and during that process, I found the voice of the novel. This was good news and bad news. Good news because this new voice was super compelling. Bad news because I already 40k rewritten and I had to go through and rewrite it in the correct voice.

Ultimately a year after I started, I finished an 86k draft that was in pretty good shape. I gave it to alpha readers and based on their feedback did a revision, cutting, moving, clarifying lines and...sadly, slightly rewriting and changing the starting point of the opening chapters again.

Then I did a round of beta reads and got some good notes on the pacing of the final third of the book. Again, another revision.

I did a read through of a printed copy with highlighters looking for four main things: typos, missing interiority, clunky language, things to delete, things to move. The highlighters are clutch because they let you keep reading fast since you're not stopping to rewrite per-se, you're just noting what type of edit something needs.

Then I sent my baby to my sanity readers whose job it was to scream loudly if any of the changes I'd made had broken the book. They had a couple good notes but otherwise just gave me the green light.

All in all, 5 rewrites of the book, then 3 larger revisions based on reads.
QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?: Elsie Raymond:
Yes! Three rounds of readers, about a dozen people total.
QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?: Elsie Raymond:
Because my books involve a lot of research and worldbuilding, I usually do a sprawling first draft where I let myself explore and figure out what raw material I need for the book. Then I go in and reverse outline what I have into a story structure and scene by scene outline I feel good about. And then, I rewrite everything from scratch, like a real psycho.
QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?: Elsie Raymond:
I queried this book for six weeks before I got my first offer. My other book I queried for about six months sending slightly over a hundred queries before deciding to move on.
QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?: Elsie Raymond:
When I got my first offer of representation here were my stats:

2 full rejections
6 fulls outstanding
2 referrals where the agent had indicated they were going to request the full soon.
45 query rejections
68 waiting for replies
4 CNR/Cold queries

For a total of 127 queries.

Most agents ask you to notify them if you receive an offer of rep, but since the offering agent was one of my top agents I knew that I was not going to realistically consider most of the people I had outstanding queries with. It felt more respectful of their time and mine to withdraw my submission. I ended up withdrawing from all but 22 of my open queries, nudging them and the six people I had fulls out with.
QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?: Elsie Raymond:
I went really broad with my queries this time. Ideally, I wanted an agent who represented speculative romance and horror, which are my two main genres, and a good track record selling in both categories. But I generally just looked at the categories they represented and if they represented science fiction, spec romance or romantasy, I figured it was worth a query.
QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?: Elsie Raymond:
For agents where there was a natural connection either to their MSWL or something they had on their agent profile, yes I included a line. But if not, I didn't stress about it.
QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?: Elsie Raymond:
Agents are in the business of selling books! They spend hundreds if not thousands of hours looking for books they can sell. When you have a book that is ready, has been revised to high heaven, includes a solid and clear pitch for how it will sell, and is right for the market, maintain faith that an agent will find it.

But the only way an agent can find your book is if you query enough people and have a book that is really working. On the first point, that means being willing to withstand a lot of rejections. I see so many people call it quits after 17 or 18 agent rejections. In most cases that kind of sample size isn't giving your book a chance.

To my second point, it also means spending serious time in revision. One of the main differences between this book and the last one I queried was that I did three rounds of beta-reads and revision, and I truly think this book being so much more polished was a game-changer. You never want to give someone a reason to put the book down.

Success Story Interview - Elsie Raymond

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