Sunday, June 28, 2020

A Week in Writing #305 - Pre-Query research


As promised, this week I began the sometimes arduous task of researching agents so that I might have the privilege of their rejection later. Of course, I hope this time I hit gold and find someone who will take an interest in my work, but I want to prepare myself for what has been the norm.

I began by using the site querytracker.com, which tracks agents and allows you to track your queries there as well, in an effort to make this a more communal process. They list agents by genres they handle, so using my previous spreadsheet, I added and subtracted from that to come out with a list of possible agents based on that criteria,

The next step, and this is where I am at present, is to do a deeper dive into these agents and their websites to see, for starters, if they actually mention handling or looking for books in that genre. While a majority of them are coming back positive, there are some that don't mention it or handle it for say Middle Grade and YA, not my target audience. I'm also noting what their position is at the firm. I'm not sure if it's better to hit the highest person on their food chain, say the owner, who no doubt is very good but also very busy, or to hit the lowest person, someone new and hoping to build their "list".

After that, I'll do a deeper dive on the ones I want to query to, who they handle and how to contact them. More and more of it appears to be going online with a form rather than an email. My guess is that forms are easier to ignore.

We'll see where it goes from there and I will, of course, be complaining informing you here as I go.

I am still working on my rewrites for The Runaway. I'm trying to fix things as I go, though I know I'll have to go back through it again later.

Oh, remember Familiar Stranger? And the editor who dropped off the face of the Earth after 30 pages? Well, my mother asked me out of the blue about that last week, and offered to call the man, since she's the one who originally introduced us and knew him previously. She, of course, left a message, since he didn't pick up her call either. She told me she left a message saying that it was about "David's novel". I would have played it differently, as I doubt she'll ever hear back from him. Personally, I've moved on without him but if she wants to go down that rabbit hole, so be it. I will let you know if anything ever changes on that front, so don't hold your breath waiting.

We did a new On the Air with Powers Squared on Friday talking about life outside the comic book. I made a point of mentioning this blog, so if anyone has followed up on that, welcome! Leave a comment.

We received new pages from our artist this week, inks to be exact. We still have four to review and will do that before the day is over, even if this might go out before that.

As far as future content is concerned, Paul and I had a Google Hangout with the co-founder of Artithmeric this morning (evening his time), Andrew Copeland. He runs a couple of ad agencies, a CBD consulting firm and Artithmeric. Next time I feel like I'm busy I'll try to remember all that he has on his plate. That video should be coming out next Sunday on our YouTube channel.

We also got back the audio for a couple of new Character profiles that will be going up later in July along with other Google Hangouts we did with our artist and colorist. You might want to subscribe and ring the bell to be sure to be notified when they go up.

I'm working on a new review for Trophy Unlocked, The Clay Pigeon, another from our Drain the DVR Saturday nights. I should have it done shortly but couldn't get it done before I did this. I did have a new post on the blog, Heat Lightning (1934), the last of my June Pre-Code Hollywood posts. Before that, on Wednesday, was another Transformers Game review from Trevor, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark.

Well, I think that covers the bases for now. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

No comments:

Post a Comment