{"id":1337,"date":"2017-06-23T07:14:15","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T07:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/?p=1337"},"modified":"2017-06-23T07:14:15","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T07:14:15","slug":"a-long-time-coming-still-waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/a-long-time-coming-still-waiting\/","title":{"rendered":"A Long Time Coming (Still Waiting)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The body count<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following on my last post, that ever hopeful sending off of actual pages to a literary agent<\/a>, I was going through my submissions list when it dawned on me that I’ve been sending out packages to agents for Trip to the Quiet Room<\/a><\/em> for a long-ish time*.<\/p>\n

For the curious (?), I use Tinderbox<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0(yes, I am a version behind — but Mark has a summer sale on at this very second)<\/a> for keeping track of prospective agents, submissions, contests, publications, even first readers.<\/p>\n

Tinderbox, along with PublishersMarketplace<\/a>, QueryTracker<\/a>, help me research (stalk?) agents and figure out who my best targets might be. Each prospective agent gets a note to themselves with some info about how to contact them, whether or not they’re open for submissions, where I found out about them, favorite foods, times they leave the house, how many pets, and what types of locks they have on their house, office, boathouse, and gym locker.<\/p>\n

\"Prospective
Prospective Agents<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They get rough ratings, depending on how likely I think they are to like the story behind Trip to the Quiet Room<\/a><\/em>\u00c2\u00a0(also known as Butterfly<\/em> and William Murphy’s Trip to the Quiet Room<\/em> over that time), though, judging by the length of time I’ve been sending out submissions and hunting for agents<\/a>, maybe I’m not rating them right.<\/p>\n

So I was looking through my list of agents and marking the latest submission sent out (the scoreboard is not looking great<\/a>, that soul-sucking void has got a huge lead) when I decided to check my very first submission (to an agent named Mollie Glick, who I thought would be perfect for\u00c2\u00a0Butterfly<\/em> because she repped a book about a whaling family**).<\/p>\n

25th of June, 2014.<\/p>\n

Wow. I’ve come a long way (without having come very far at all). The query letter has changed a lot over the years, some with greater success of just getting a response (instead of just flinging off into The Void — this letter to Ms. Glick is still out there in the void, I’m guessing she’s going to pass on the submission)<\/p>\n

This will make a great story to tell Oprah, at some point, I’m sure. And when I’m sitting down in a coffee shop with J.K. Rowling and we’re both sending tweets to each other instead of speaking, we’ll compare just how many people passed on our books before we finally got a good, solid bite…<\/p>\n

\"The
The first query<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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* Some glaciers might disagree with me, but I’ve got my own back on them by leaving a hair dryer running constantly, night and day, speeding up the process of global warming.<\/p>\n

** Logic has never, ever been my strong suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following on my last post, that ever hopeful sending off of actual pages to a literary agent, I was going through my submissions list when it dawned on me that I’ve been sending out packages to agents for Trip to the Quiet Room for a long-ish time*. For the curious (?), I use Tinderbox\u00c2\u00a0(yes, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agent-hunt","category-butterfly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}