Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 7

Path to Publication: ACTS OF WAR: AFTERSHOCK or the Novel I Wrote in Public

Back in 2017, I got this bonkers idea to blog the entire process of writing and publishing my second novel from Privateer Press (with their blessing, of course). I ended up with 21 weekly updates plus a handful of other posts related to the novel, like excerpts, dramatis personae, and so on. Why did I do this ? Let’s talk about it.

First, a little background on the book. Aftershock is the second in a trilogy of novels I wrote for Privateer Press in their Iron Kingdoms setting, which is the setti...

Query Response Round-Up: Week of 8/25/23

Another week in the querying salt mines. Let’s see how I did and what kind of responses I reeled in.

My overall query stats as of today.

Total Queries: 30Rejections: 9Full Requests: 3CNR: 1Pending Queries: 17Pending Requests: 3

I sent seven new queries this last week, and I think I’m done for the time being. I’m gonna set back and wait for responses to roll in before I send any more. I feel like I’ve hit all the agents that might be a good fit and are currently accepting subs. There are a...

Query Response Round-Up: Week of 8/18/23

I’ve been querying my novel SECOND DAWN a lot, and the responses have been trickling in. I thought I’d collect the ones I’ve received in the last week or so, share them with you here, and maybe indulge in a little bit if query rejectomancy.

First, here are my overall stats thus far.

Total Queries: 23Rejections: 7Full Requests: 3Pending Queries: 13Pending Requests: 3

I’m quite pleased with these numbers. A 13% request rate is certainly validating. I did have one CNR, but the agent got back...

Query Quest: Who Should I Query?

One of the biggest challenges in querying agents is figuring out just who you should be querying. There are tons of agents out there, and narrowing down those that might be the best fit for you and your work is no easy task. In this post, I’m going to tell you how I go about it. Now, with my limited experience in querying agents, this is not a “thou shalt” kinda thing. It’s just me fumbling along and figuring out what works and maybe what doesn’t. This is less advice and more here’s what I do, a...

Query/Submission Statement: July 2023

Been a while since I’ve done one of these, mostly because I haven’t been submitting a lot of short stores. What I have been doing, though, is sending out agent queries for my novel SECOND DAWN. Those are submissions, too, right?

Okay, first up let’s do short story submissions.

July 2023 Submission Report CardSubmissions Sent: 6Rejections: 5No Response: 0Acceptances: 0Further Consideration/Shortlist: 0Withdrawals: 0

I’m not exactly killing it on the short story front in 2023. I’ve sent o...

Query Quest: Full Manuscript Request

I started querying my novel SECOND DAWN back in early June, and I expected to rack up a bunch of rejections and change my query and synopsis half a dozen times before I even sniffed a full manuscript request. Well, I’m delighted to be wrong. Early last week, I received a full manuscript request from a great agent. Let’s discuss that.

Remember, these posts are observations based on my admittedly limited experience with querying. In other words, this ain’t gospel, just me recounting my own experie...

Query Quest: What Are My Chances?

I’ve been using a marvelous database called QueryTracker (highly, highly recommended) to find agents and keep track of my queries. In addition to these vital services, the site provides TONS of data on each agent, and you know me, I fucking love me some data. So, I thought it might be fun(?), educational, and a little terrifying to look at query and submission data for the ten agents I’ve queried so far. I won’t be identifying these agents because this is just about the numbers and what we poor ...

Query Quest: Rejection #2

Recently, I received another rejection from an agent I’ve queried with my novel SECOND DAWN. It’s the second since I started this process earlier in the month. Now, if this was a rejection for a short story, it wouldn’t be post-worthy, but since I’m new to this querying thing, I’m finding all aspects of it interesting, even the rejections, so I’ll share it with you.

Here’s that second rejection.

Dear Aeryn,

Thank you for your email. While SECOND DAWN sounds interesting, I don’t think it is right...

Query Quest: Agent Query Checklist Part 1

I recently started querying literary agents for my novel SECOND DAWN, and I’m going to start posting about that experience. Now, for those of you who have followed my blog for a while, I should make it clear that unlike submitting short stories to lit magazines and anthologies, I am NOT an expert in this arena. So this post is less advice and more me recounting my experience (which may or may not be useful to you). In other words, don’t judge me too harshly if my experience differs from your own...

Agent Query Checklist: The Must-Haves

I recently started querying literary agents for my novel SECOND DAWN, and I’m going to start posting about that experience. Now, for those of you who have followed my blog for a while, I should make it clear that unlike submitting short stories to lit magazines and anthologies, I am NOT an expert in this arena. So this post is less advice and more me recounting my experience (which may or may not be useful to you). In other words, don’t judge me too harshly if my experience differs from your own...