And finally those pics of Paul Walker...

Friday... I'm in love!

Blogger hates me

All I want is to post more pics of Paul Walker. Is that so wrong?

Blogger hates me

All I want is to post more pics of Paul Walker. Is that so wrong?

Grumble grumble

Grumble grumble

You had me at hello...

My agent is blogging about me today! How cool is that?

So a little more back story…

The conference was DARA - the Dallas Area Romance Authors conference. The wicked sexy, fast driving Donnell posted about it on my local RWA loop and I rode down with her and the super hot, NYT bestselling Gena Showalter. Luckily for me, Gena loves meeting people, introducing people, having lunch with people… drinks with more people. (Although she claims she’s really shy)

This was a smaller conference with loads of friendly people and great workshops, and it worked out that we (I say we—but it wasn’t me at all—LOL) were able to get a great group together for an after dinner outing. (drinks)

I didn't schedule to pitch to Kristin because I’m deathly afraid of pitching (stupid fear really) and besides, she had just-- like days before--form rejected me. Now this ties into her post yesterday about being professional and not taking things too personally. And to be perfectly honest it was a tiny bit awkward sitting across from someone who rejected me—and yet I still managed to be fun and normal (it says so in her blog, so it must be true). Actually after the initial discomfort, it was easy. If you’ve ever met her- you know it would be very hard to not like her. And we had a wonderful time that night with Gena trying to query her about her Muffin Man book—do you know the muffin man? SO it was a wonderful relaxed thing. Happened months ago and I wouldn’t have even mentioned it in my 2nd query since I honestly wouldn’t have expected her to remember me…but there was a method to my madness.

I wanted to make sure the query made it past her reader/assistant. And no assistant is ever going to reject a query of someone the agent may, possibly know personally. It is too awkward if they do because it looks like the agent rejected them (make sense?). She had also come on one of my loops and basically said I'm looking for XYZ and my book was XYZ--so I mentioned that too. So I put these two things in the very first para—basically making it a "You had me at hello" query for her. IMO.

Naturally this is not something you can fake- if you didn’t meet the person than it looks real shady. But use what you’ve got. It doesn’t always mean spending money. A lot of agents spend a week on a Yahoo loop. Mention it. Conferences and writers loops tell the agent you are actively participating in the industry. Always a good thing.

Of course this only gets you past the query stage. The rest, well, that’s another set of planets aligning.

And deep thought for the day: It wouldn’t really be art if everyone loved it.

Still Snoopy Dancing

It's Official!

I just signed with the uber fab, super wonderful Kristin Nelson!

I'm still in a bit of a daze about it. I keep checking the emails and such to be sure I'm not just making it up, LOL.

If I am dreaming, please no one wake me up :-)

Friday...I'm in Love

Query Vindication!

My very first rejection was a form reject. I’ve only gotten two. (I haven’t queried widely, so put the rotten tomatoes down). This first one did sting. The second one didn’t because I knew what I did wrong the second I hit send. So the 2nd one doesn’t even count in my book.

I only queried 3 people on the first round (1 reject, 1 LOVE IT-want exclusive, 1 send partial-but was during exclusive). The one who loved it was my top choice at the time and she was very, very enthusiastic and wanted exclusives and it just got extended and extended, and then there were revisions. And well, I did the revisions and then it somehow got passed off to another agent at the agency and sat there forever. Then I hastily sent off a e-query to the guy who handed me reject #2. And then I reworked the novel.

The reworking was inspired by the killer query letter I wrote in which I looked at the query and said- now there’s a story! And then went back and revised my novel to match my query. LOL. It worked!

So out went the new round of queries. And the response has been wonderful. No hard/form rejects! Only one true reject, but it was personal and had recommendations. She actually recommended the agent who first rejected me. So I thought, hey, why not? My query letter is soooo much better.

So I did it.

And she asked for a partial! Ha! I was so elated that I’d cancelled out her previous reject! And then, she asked for a full! I don’t know why her asking for a full is so much more exciting than any of the others (right now I have fulls with everyone I’ve queried, except for the one personal reject- wait, that's wrong- I also have a query w/partial that has been on a desk at Writers House for 4 months- keep forgetting about it).

But it is. I feel soooooo vindicated! I may even re-send one to the other agent who form rejected me. But I’m pretty sure he’s a putz.