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.

After many false starts, the query letter for the book is ready. Ostensibly when you’re on the outside looking in and have zero contacts in the publishing biz, the best bet is to query a prospective agent about your manuscript. Or so all the books and web resources say.

This theory makes a lot of sense to me. Because if the query letter is good, and grabs the interest of the agent, then maybe, just maybe the manuscript is good too. If the query letter is awful, it’s a lot easier, faster and cheaper to reject a query letter than a manuscript or a bunch of sample chapters.

Now armed with the query letter and the almost completed revisions from editor person, I’m ready to roll.

As I query prospective agents, I’ll blog about it and when the responses come back, I’ll post them as well, blacking out the contact information.

I’ll also post the query letter that wins over the agent. There’s a ton of books and resources on writing query letters for fictional books, but next to no examples of an actual one that won over an agent. How helpful.

I’m breathing a sigh of relief because I got an email from editor person, informing me we are on for tonight. Thank you tech guy for resolving the conundrum that haunted editor person and threatened to derail this evening’s session.

To preserve writing momentum for the second book, I’ve decided to blog each day only after I finish my targeted page count. Which means the new blog entries will now appear towards the early to late afternoon. Note this revised plan still holds with the stated update schedule of one blog per day, every day unless it’ s the end of the world or I can’t get to my PC, whichever comes first.

The new release schedule has other benefits. Now when I blog, my brain will have absorbed the necessary daily dose of caffeine and this will improve the quality of the entries. I’m not sure exactly how many milligrams of caffeine that is, but based on what the wife tells me, it’s too much.

Surely there are some among us who drink a pot of coffee every day, besides myself. Right? Anyone?

Did I say a pot? No, I meant half a pot of coffee.

So editor person calls me in a panic about ten minutes ago because they can no longer read any email. Nothing opens they said. Nothing will delete they said. I did what I usually do. I listen for a minute, say uh-huh that sucks then put them in touch with tech guy. Right now editor person and tech guy are sorting through the email mess together.

Here’s hoping they work it out ASAP. Because if editor person can’t read their mail, they can’t get their work done for the day job, thus precluding the task of being editor person later tonight.

It’s beginning to make sense now why 9 out of 10 authors wind up at AA meetings on Wednesday evenings.

I can’t afford a good drinking binge right now on any level.

Still pushing forward with book number two. I’m nearing the twenty page mark and still reaching for the perfect title, although at this point I’ll settle for something just better than what I have.