Tag: agents

Query Letters and Hair Pulling by Kristin Molnar

By Elisabeth Author AdviceGuest Blogs September 29, 2010 5 comments

First of all, I’d like to thank Elisabeth for having me guest blog.  This is my first guest blog appearance, so I’m feeling all professional today.  My name is Kristin Molnar and write mostly dark paranormal romance.  What’s not to love about sexy vampires?  Though I do tend to throw in a bit of murder and mayhem too.

I am in the query letter stage of trying to get published.  It feels like I spend most of my day slumped over the computer, researching agents.  No one wants the same thing.  One agent wants nothing but my query letter.  That’s easy, I can do that.  Another wants query, synopsis, sample chapter, a bio, and rights to my firstborn child (not really but sometimes it feels that way).  And yet another wants a synopsis and a bio.  I have spent countless hours making charts to keep track of who wants what and what I’ve sent who.  My charts are organized, but my head still wants to explode when I look at them.  I think I’ve sent out over fifteen query letters.  Not that many, in the scheme of things, but it feels like a lot.  I’ve received a few rejections, some of them form some of them personalized.  I’m not so much discouraged by the rejections as I am the sheer amount of information needed to keep going.

There are books, blogs, workshops, facebook pages, and twitter accounts dedicated to agents and query letters.  Not a single one of them will tell you the same thing.  I’m starting to feel like I’m playing Russian Roulette with agents.  Spin the wheel, cross my fingers, and hope my query ends up on the right person’s desk while their in just the perfect mood to hear about my novel.  Agents are busy, busy people, and somehow I have to come up with one hell of a pitch in 250 words or less.  Some days it feels impossible.  Then I check my email, and I see that someone else in RWA or FF&P (Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal chapter) has gotten an offer from an agent or publisher.  I might be a little bit jealous, but mostly it reminds me that this really can be done.  By busting my hump, writing like a tempest, and doing my research, I can get there too.  

Every day I feel lucky to know what it is that I want to do with my life.  I might not be selling anything yet, but at least I know.  Some people go their entire lives and don’t even get that far.  As writer’s we are gifted and cursed.  We have to let these stories out, and then we have to work even harder to get it out there for the reader.

Kristin Molnar

Twitter: @KLMolnar
http://klmolnar.weebly.com
facebook.com/kristin.molnar1

I can’t be the only freak…can I?

By Elisabeth Author AdviceParanormal Romance July 4, 2010 2 comments

So I made my first agent pitch, and though knew to expect it I am still majorly bummed about the response i received. In a nutshell, she felt that the vampire thing is old and tired, and no agent or editor wants to hear it anymore.

So I get it, vampires are hot these days and everyone is writing them and as an agent she sees all of it. That must get old. But here is the thing: as an avid reader myself, I came to writing my own series by way of wanting more reading material. Not to mention, i belong to plenty of email lists (devoted to lovers of vampire romance I might add) where readers constantly ask what series they can read now that they have finished series x, y, and z and what can they read next? There are a lot of voracious readers out there who LOVE to plow through series after series of hot, vampire love. I don’t know that there is such a thing as too many. And I’m sorry but I am just not into writing steampunk. I love vampire novels, and I can’t get enough of them. I know I’m not the only one…am I?