There’s a sea of agents out there, shark infested waters. Don’t believe me? Dip a toe in queryshark.blogspot.com and it will come out bleeding. After my first rejection sunk my ship, I threw out the ballast (cut my wordcount by almost 10000), researched (again) dissociative disorder, tested a new opening as bait for teens, fished through author and agent websites to determine the best protective gear (everything from formatting to agent interests), and lit my flares (started a website, a blog, and a facebook acount). Now what did I forget? Hmm… Latoya Alloway participated in Writeoncon, an online kidlit conference, and posted what she learned on her blog. Better late than never, I studied a whole bait-bucket of queries to see what a certain agent liked best, an agent that already chewed me up at ECW’s conference (over word count). Sooo, after 2 more rounds of cutting bait, my word count is down another 10,000, which means it’s almost time to go fishing with stronger line. Shark test. There’s a small matter of receiving enough teen reviews back first. Minnows nibbling at my toes. Sigh.
Thanks for the mention. I wish I knew some teenagers. I haven’t been around them for more than 10 years now. Let us know how the rest of your submissions go.