The hardest part of doing anything (for me at least) is getting started. Once I do that, I'm a beast. I have no experience building websites, so this has been kind of fun, and a little frustrating... took me way too long to figure out how to publish this site once I had it built; I'm not a techie.
I hope there's enough here to keep people interested. I tried to think of things I'd like to see on a website... more than just, 'here's my book, here's where to buy it... and... GO!'... especially since I'm not published yet. Gotta remain optimistic, there's no point in trying if you don't believe in yourself.
I've sent my query letter out to 12 agents. So far I've received three rejections. I expected two of them, one agent had already blogged about vampires being 'out,' and the other is also an author (who writes vampire novels). The third was an agency who only allowed query letters. I like to submit to agencies who want pages as well. I feel like it gives them a better idea of my writing style. It's really hard to boil 85,000 words down into a couple of paragraphs... try it sometime (and if you think it's easy, we'll talk -- I need you!).
So the elephant in the room is, of course, Twilight. Everyone apparently started writing vampire novels when Twilight hit. Some of them probably didn't give a fig about vampires, but I'm sure a lot of others had been waiting for their opporunity and just have better timing than I do! This increased interest in vampires is great, but it's a double-edged sword because agents are sick of reading about them, and you really have to stand out to get noticed. And while we're talking Twilight, let me go on record as saying that I loved the series. I devoured them like everyone else and even passed my addiction on to a few others. There's something about Stephenie Meyer's writing that sucks you in (I just finished reading The Host.... really hard to put it down).
My two greatest fears at the moment --->
1. I'm deluding myself
2. I'm not deluding myself, but no agent is going to take a chance on me
Hopefully neither of those scenarios are true.
So next I have to sit down and crank out a synopsis in order to submit to more agents on my list. Some of them want a query letter, a two page synopsis, and pages. As difficult as the query letter was, the synopsis seems infinitely more difficult, and I don't know why... I get to put in more detail so it should be a breeze...
Ah well, gotta go get ready to meet a friend for lunch. Have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by!
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