Well, I may have flubbed my afternoon deadline, but here we go…

I spent some time with Editor person over the phone discussing the query letter. They liked one half of my pitch, hated the other. More of a concern was that their least favorite half was the first two paragraphs. So we went back and forth like usual. It’s still not 100 percent there, but it’s close. My guess is the query letter is about 90 percent on and by Tuesday it will be 100 percent. Since I’m an unknown quantity with zero references in publishing I have to make the query custom fit for each agent I query.

In between revisions I’ve been looking for prospective agents. Using Jeff Herman’s book, I developed my first round short list of three agents who specialize in the genre my book best fits within. All three have negotiated film deals, six figure advances and world rights in the past 12 months for clients. Then I googled my a** off looking for any interviews or other insights into each of the three agents as individuals. Cause basically, I’m looking for a very specific personality type in an agent. I’m not a looking for another friend, I’m looking for my champion. I’m also looking for some kind of commonality between their back story and mine. One thing I can say is there are a lot of agents with very impressive credentials, so if round one doesn’t work out, there’s plenty to choose from in round two.