Query Roundup 10/19

Friday, October 19, 2012

It's 4 pm on Friday, 10/19/2012 and I've finished reading my queries.

I had 180 queries this week--a lot of fantasy in the inbox this week.

I requested 2 manuscripts

YA steampunk that sounds awesome.
Contemporary New Adult, clearly it sounds amazing.

I regretted but had to pass on 1 manuscripts.

YA fantasy. Great query and comp titles, but the writing just didn't seem there.

Now I know this seems a little light for me. I've been noticing lately that I think the quality of my queries has gone up. On one hand this is awesome. On the other it makes it a little harder for people querying me to stand out. Because the truth is I can't represent everything that I think is awesome--I can't even read everything that I think is awesome because I don't have the time.

Queries and reading requested material is barely 10% of what I do. And trust me, no one would want me for an agent if it was more than that. But that means I have to be selective with my time, and if the quality is going up it means I might have to be even more selective.

That means if you're querying, really make sure your first pages are stellar. That's what's going to make me need to read more--and probably other agents too.

6 comments:

Sarah Grimm said...: Thanks for the advice, Suzie. I needed this today. I've been looking at my beginning pages again recently because ... well, to be honest, I want to hook one of my top ten agents.; October 19, 2012 at 4:08 PM
Janet Johnson said...: The stats always amaze me. 2/180. Wow! But we query to beat the odds, don't we? As always, thanks for sharing!; October 19, 2012 at 5:45 PM
Erin Kane Spock said...: This helped me put things in perspective. Thanks for sharing.; October 19, 2012 at 7:36 PM
anna manna said...: I really love reading your query reports. Just out of curiosity - as you receive a huge amount of queries, would the manuscript you regretfully pass receive a form rejection or a personalized one?; October 20, 2012 at 1:11 PM
Mike Koch - Protect The Risen said...: I wonder what has fueled the interest to write fantasy or is that common for you to see?; October 22, 2012 at 1:26 PM
Joan Y. Edwards said...: Dear Suzie,
I tagged you on my blog for having a fun, inspirational, and enlightening blog.

Here is a link to the blog post:
http://joanyedwards.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/i-was-tagged-in-a-writers-game-of-tag/

You are under no obligation to play. I hope you will. Thanks for always giving us great information about queries and publication.

Never Give Up
Joan Y. Edwards; October 22, 2012 at 2:59 PM

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Five Random Things About Suzie

1. I drink so much orange soda, it's probably running through my veins. I've been known to go through a twelve pack of diet sunkist in a day.

2. I'm legitimately nocturnal (or a vampire). I will be so exhausted at two pm that I'm falling asleep standing up - it has happened before, at Six Flags no less - but as soon as the sun goes down I'm wide awake.

3. I have a gorgeous unused $6000 Reem Acra wedding dress hanging in my closet, and it showed up on my doorstep the same day my (now ex) fiance broke up with me. And thank God for that. I wouldn't have wanted to waste that dress on him.

4. Social anxiety plagues me daily. I write a script and practice in front of the mirror when I have to make a phone call, but most people who interact with me have no idea how nervous I am (or perhaps they lie) because I've worked so hard to try to overcome it.

5. I'm actually worried that I will never love my children (when I do have them in the far off future) as much as I love my dogs. I just like animals better than people - they're sweet and innocent and soft and furry - is that so wrong?

quotes

金不一定閃
流浪者不都迷路

"I dreamed you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane
I think I made you up inside my head
I fancied you'd return the way you said
But I grow old and I forget your name
I think I made you up inside my head" ~Silvia Plath, Mad Girl's Love Song

"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." ~ Robert Frost

"Love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds." ~ William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116"

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning-...So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

"For deadly secrets strike when understood
and lucky stars all exit on the run:
never try to knock on rotten wood,
never try to know more than you should." ~ Sylvia Plath, "Admonitions"

"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become." ~ Milan Kundera, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

William Wilberforce: "No one of our age has ever taken power."
William Pitt Jr: "Which is why we're too young to realize certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." ~ Mark Twain

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." ~ Mark Twain

“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace.” ~ Charles Dickens, A MUTUAL FRIEND

"I think the idea of life after death is a bad idea. It distracts you from appreciating the uniqueness of the here and now, the moment you are living." ~ Joseph Campbell

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear...Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end." ~ Alan Paton, CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY

"To laugh often and much.. to endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better... To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived, This is to have succeeded." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover or friend, I have changed in their eyes...[Some see it as] a mission, as if ...they can pull me back from the wreckage of that day. Of course, their best efforts are largely useless. No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved." ~ Alice Sebold, LUCKY

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared." ~Tupac, The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Confessions

Friday, October 19, 2012