Schroedinger's Query

Last night on Twitter, an agent I've recently queried said she was reading something she found so hard to put down that she might have to break her two year stretch without signing a new author.

Now, I know she's received hundreds of queries just in the week and a half since I threw my submission in the pile.  I also know that the one she's reading might not be that recent - slush piles being what they are, it can take some agents months to read what they even decide to read at all.  There's no reason for me to think that I'm responsible for her excitement.

Even so, until I know for sure ... I'm in a state of perfect potential - the cat can simultaneously be dead and alive, as far as my experience is concerned.  Quantum state query.  It's also simultaneously exciting and sobering!


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In truth, I have been a particularly slow author about my work during this past six months.  I completed the revisions before last October's JRW Conference, but the rate of my submissions is significantly less than it was when I first (thought I had) finished the MSS.  This isn't because I have lost confidence, by any means - and I can't honestly complain that it is because I'm "just too busy" - I'm as busy as I was before, but I may be being more dismissive, in terms of the process of elimination.  I may fear I'm too old.  I may just have become slightly inured to the role of Unpublished Author.

But Ax is a great novel.  Not Great Novel - but a great read, a ripping yarn.  It deserves, perhaps, a better steward than I have been, at least of late, with my lazy advocacy.  It will "get out there" ... but not without my getting it there.


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So ...  I have to edit this post to point out that I realized some obvious facts after writing it - and the cat, unfortunately, is dead indeed.

At least, this particular cat.  It's possible there's another box lying around in the world SOMEwhere (though if Carole Blake has gone two years without a new client, I'm thinking at least this query might be short on Possible-Cats).

But the thing is ... she was saying she had something she could not put down (clue #1) AND was talking about signing someone (clue #2).  The thing is, yes - I've queried her recently.  However, I have NOT sent her a partial nor a full.  She has exactly what Blake Friedmann's submissions process requests:  query, synopsis, three chapters.  Boom.

The likelihood of an agent getting that far ahead of a preliminary like that is vanishingly slim, if not outright imaginary, of course.  An agent with the experience of Carole Blake?  I'd suspect none-at-all fits the bill more precisely.

Even so.  One more query.  One more rejection in waiting, I would think - and she's already been so very kind as it is, particularly with me kissing up publicly.  One more step on a path I'm not ready to quit.

Even if I am rather slow strolling along it.