Skip to main content

Secret Agent

Just how many literary agents are there?  I wonder if I’ve run through the entire list yet.  Just before the holidays, when I had a rare few free moments, I started sending out queries.  I use agentquery.com.  As Preditors & Editors shows, there are plenty of people out there ready to take you for every word you’ve got.

In this day of webocentrism, you’d think agents, of all people, would keep up-to-date.  Agents, however, are literally spoiled for choice.  Most of them don’t need new clients since so many people are trying to break into writing that they can pick only what they find titillating.  Like deciding at a glance that you’d never go out with this person.  Never mind what might be inside.

So I found five agencies, all listed as open to new queries and saying, “Yes, I’d like to see your work!”  Out the emails went.  The first email received an autoreply stating my query was being automatically deleted since the agent was too busy.  Check back when her website said she was accepting queries.  I checked again.  Her website said she was accepting queries.

Email to agent number two bounced.  The message said my individual email account (there were no attachments to my email) had a high probability of being spam.  I have a gmail.com address, and I know that .com can be a curse.  I tried from my verizon.net account, my only other email.  Guess what?  I’m spam.  The agent can’t be reached.



Agent three’s email actually made it through.  It took him less than two weeks to send me a pinhead email.

Agent four used a submittable account, so that emails wouldn’t bounce.  I was impressed by this, but I expect someone so savvy won’t be interested in my sophomoric efforts.

Email to agent five went through, but since the mailbox was full, it was deleted three days later, as undelivered as an untimely birth.  

Since those few rare moments of free time, I haven’t been able to research other agents.  Meanwhile my novels grow older, and in some sense, heavier.  Best not to write about contemporary events, I guess, unless you already have an agent.


To those who have, it is said, more will be given.  Such is life without a literary agent.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe Okay

  A couple pieces of encouraging news, perhaps, dear struggling writers.   I had a couple short stories accepted for publication in recent weeks.   As a fellow writer recently said, “You've got to keep trying.  Somebody will like what you wrote.” That’s a bit of sunshine.   And it’s likely true.   But the stories:   “The Crossing,” about two men in a boat trying to cross the Atlantic, was accepted by JayHenge Publishing.   JayHenge is a small, but paying publisher.   I was flattered when they wanted it for their Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe anthology.   Being associated with Poe in any way feels good. The second story, “St. Spiders’ Day,” had been brewing in my mind for years—yes, this is a long game!   A friend pointed me to The Creepy podcast.   Since the story hadn’t been written, I followed their guidelines of what they wanted.   It worked. I recently heard a successful wri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Working Through It

  The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time.   Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot.   Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group.   Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday.   I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare.   I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run.   And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined.   One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful.   They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only.   Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away.   They also met on Saturdays.   Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creative Righting

  Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world.   That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week.   That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press.   The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor.   She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher.   I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions.   I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor.   That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it?   You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify.   It’s got speculative elements to it.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more