Let the Querying (slowly) Begin

Book One in the Olive Jooce series is done and I'm very happy with the way it turned out. Thank you for all the fabulous ideas for future books; it was fun to hear of all the quirky things kids fear! While I'm sure I'll be using several of the suggestions, I'm drawing on my own experiences for book two and will have Olive face her fear of jumping off the diving board. I can vividly picture the view from the board at the high school pool where I took swim lessons – it still sends a shiver down my spine.

I've also begun work on the dreaded query letter. A query letter is basically a request for a literary agent or publisher to read your manuscript. The dreaded part for me is that this first impression is so crucial. These folks get gazillions of query letters each day and if you don't dazzle them in the first few lines, it's a short trip to the 'no' pile.

I dipped my toe into the querying pool yesterday and sent out 3 letters to agents that I had corresponded with on the last series. I thought this was a good start since they had shown interest in my work in the past.

Most agents send an auto-reply message letting you know that the email arrived. It can take weeks, if not months, for them to respond (if they respond at all) so this is a good way for them to let you know that your query did not get lost in cyberspace and keeps you from sending a bunch of 'did you get it??' emails. So when I got a quick response from one of the agents I assumed it was a 'I got it, now leave me alone for a few months' email. But it wasn't. She wanted to read the book (squee!).

After I ran downstairs to tell my husband and dance around for joy I sent off the book. She responded right away to let me know that she got it and that she is working about 8 weeks out on submissions. Now we move on to the part of the process that I am not very good at – the waiting.