Okay team, I am officially going into the query trenches for running book. I mean, I kind of already started testing the water over the last month and sent a handful of queries out to test my letter and opening pages.
And my first reply back was last Friday. And it was a FULL REQUEST! Which means the agent requested the full manuscript to review. There’s also such thing as a partial request, which is where you send part of the manuscript (like the first three chapters, or the first 50 pages). Of course, the most common response to querying is rejection. And a whole lot of it.
A full request isn’t a promise of anything — I had a couple for my last manuscript (cat story) that were ultimately passes — but it is certainly heartening for that to be my first response before I’ve had any rejections. I hope it means my query and opening are working. Time will tell.
So with that news (plus my friend reviewing the manuscript again to give me some encouragement), I am shutting my editorial eye on running book for a while and going to send out more queries. Querying takes time . . . time to prepare individual submissions, time to research agents, time to send out in batches to get feedback and then send in more batches, time waiting and mostly waiting for nos. The typical wait time to hear back on a query letter tends to be two to three months. Sometimes you get lucky and hear back sooner.
But I’m going to chip away at it and see where it gets me.
In the meantime, I’m going to work on drafting my new book. Yes, I’m still working on that murder plot. I’m making progress.
With Love,
Natalie