Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Is It Too Early To Be This Excited?

On April 25th, I participated in the #DVpit Twitter party. I wasn't expected much, but to my surprise, I received a good number of likes from literary agents, most of which were on my "to-query" list. The next day, I revised my query and first pages as much as possible and started sending them out to the requesting agents. Again, I wasn't expecting much.

Not even two hours later, I received my first reply. Nervous, I opened the email thinking it was yet another rejection. Instead, it was my very first FULL REQUEST! I was more than ecstatic. I went over my manuscript for about five hours before sending it to the agent's assistant. I had to force myself to press the SEND button on the email. A few minutes later, I received a confirmation email stating that she [the assistant] received my manuscript. According to their website, full requests take about 60 days for a reply. So here I am in the most painful 60-day wait ever.

That's not all. To distract myself from waiting for a response from the other #DVpit agents and my full request, I decided to send out a few more queries. On May 3rd, I queried an agent from a well-known agency that reps two of the authors with popular Young Adult books-to-movies. Once again, I wasn't expecting much, especially since most of the feedback from other authors is negative (she hardly responds if she's not interested...and she's hardly interested).

Five days later, I received an email from the agency's editor stating that she'd like to read the first 50 pages of my manuscript. She also asked if I had any other requests out with agents. I squealed! This isn't a full request, but the thought of possibly being among some of the best-selling authors made my day. I went over the first 50 pages for any errors that jumped out, saved it as a PDF, then sent it as requested. I added a note that I do have a full request out with an agent currently. Again, a few minutes later I received a confirmation email. I'm not sure how long I should wait on a partial request, but I read that it's a 3-month wait. According to Query Tracker, she usually responds to partial fairly quick so maybe I won't have to wait as long.

I'm excited but I'm keeping it cool. This doesn't mean either of them will be ringing my phone offering me representation, but it's one step further. I feel as if I've accomplished step 1 of my goal to being published, and that's something to celebrate. Ice cream for me! (as if I need a reason to eat ice cream).

6 comments:

  1. ICE CREAM ALL AROUND! Baskin Robbins chocolate peanut butter and Haagen Daz vanilla swiss almond are my faves <3

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    1. OMG YES! Chocolate Peanut Butter. And there's a Baskin Robbins down the road from me!

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  2. Congratulations!! That's absolutely HUGE! ❤️❤️🎉🎉

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