Further Updates from Query Land
Or, the long, long wait for rejection
Hi, I’m Matt, and it’s been 3 weeks since my last confession post about querying. Here’s an update on where we are in the process. Buckle up buttercup!
Quick Stats:
Keywords (I guess?): YA, Fantasy, Contemporary Fantasy, Portal Fantasy
Word count: 85,000
Elevator Pitch: Fourteen-year-old Jessie Barstow has the rare ability to travel to other locations and other worlds at will, and she’s being hunted for it.
Agents Queried: 77
Agent Rejections: 37
Full Manuscript Requests: ZERO
How It’s Going
Querying still sucks. Things have slowed to a crawl. Most weeks I get one response to my queries, maybe two. This week I got two as of last night. For some reason, the query responses, all rejections to be clear, tend to come on Fridays. Maybe that means I’ll get another one today.
My oldest unanswered query is 8 weeks today. Actually, there are 4 queries that are 8 weeks old as of today. Each agent is different in terms of timeline, but there were a fair few that I queried that said they aim to respond within 8 weeks. My freshest unanswered query is about 3.5 weeks old. I haven’t sent a new query since March 30. I could go back through the list on Query Tracker and see who else to query, but at this point that doesn’t feel like a worthwhile endeavor.
As I said in my last post about querying, there are many paths to publication, and that’s something I’ve been leaning more into over the last couple weeks. I had a conversation with an old coworker who has indie-pubbed two books with a third on the way. She also has trad pub experience. It was a very interesting conversation, and gave me a lot to consider that I hadn’t before, like getting in touch with local bookstores and stuff like that.
There are plenty of people here and elsewhere that use the tools available to self-publish their work. I’ve heard plenty of arguments from authors that like that because of the control. There’s no guarantee of success, but then there’s no guarantee of success with traditional publishing either.
What I’m working On
I’m still working on the two other novels, more so on the contemporary fantasy, buddy comedy one over the last week or two. I am a total pantser when I write so it’s interesting to see how the story evolves. I’m working on chapter 4, with the plan of the story story that inspired it being chapter 5, but now it might become chapter 6. I inserted a stupid joke creature into chapter 41, and it’s taken the chapter and possibly the story, in a way that I hadn’t figured on before.
I had a rejection for a flash thing that I ended up posting here. And I’m working on revising something for a new zine. There’s a kind of experimental horror thing that I wrote specifically to be a podcast episode a while back that I need to revise and send out. I made a stab at recording it myself, but I’m sure there are people that could do it better.
What’s Next for Jessie
For The Traveling Jessie Barstow I’ve gotten mostly positive feedback from a handful of early readers. I’ve fixed a lot of typos and have another small batch of notes to fix. I’ll likely print out the whole thing one more time and try to go through it with a fine-toothed comb before moving on.
I’ve talked to a couple artists this week about covers and gotten a sketch that I like from one. She’s going to do some more stuff and share it with me. If both the images are great, I’m not sure what I’ll do with two potential covers, but that’s an issue I’ll have to figure out at a later date.
I still need to look into publishing platforms. I still need to set up a website. I still need to pick a domain name. I really should make a list.
I’m going to work on stuff in the background and give the querying process until the end of May to see if anything materializes. That seems like a good amount of time.
From there, I might start serializing it here to build up some reader base while I work on the pub process. Barring some minor fixes, the whole thing is ready to go. I’m growing impatient of getting it out into the world. Stay tuned for that, I guess?
So that’s where I’m at. Another kind of nothing burger that may be building to a something burger under my own steam.2 In the meantime, I’ll keep plugging away on my other writing projects and doing what I’m doing. How are your projects going? Have you done anything stupid in the kitchen lately?3 I hope whatever you’re working on you find fulfillment and are able to beat those demons of self-doubt away.
Two kobolds in a trenchcoat.
That doesn’t exactly make sense.
Yeesh, this post has kinda turned into a link fest.
We're in it for the long haul!
Thanks for the update. Stay at it and let me know if you need a pep talk!