Monday, February 21, 2011

CROSS THOSE T's--DOT THOSE I's!


I've spent much of this President's Day reading queries and organizing the emailed partials and manuscripts I've requested. Later in this post I'm going to sound like that old, cranky English teacher you had in high school. You remember--the one who insisted that you write your term paper in a conventional style and that you number the pages and write your name clearly. But for now, in the interest of transparency, I must confess some organizational sins of my own.

I asked for the same manuscript--twice. That's the trouble with electronic submissions. If you're not very organized, you can get in trouble. I have a new system in place which should prevent these kinds of mistakes.
I know I've done the same thing with rejections. How awful to get rejected once and then get rejected again. So sorry.
My current problem is that I'm loving a manuscript I requested, but the author did not put her contact info anywhere. It's not on the manuscript, her bio or the synopsis. I no longer have the original query. No way for me to contact her unless she reads this blog. Lisa T--email me?
Please remind yourself to identify everything you send to agents. Write your name, address, phone number and email address on each item. Use a running head on each page of your manuscript with your name and title of your book. Simple to do and it could mean a lot.
And, yes, a super-organized agent would never lose a contact. In a perfect world, all agents would be perfect secretaries. Trouble is, sometimes we're just not as together as we should be.
Oh, the photo above. It's just for fun--the first of the three amaryllis bulbs we received for Christmas from our daughter-in-law, Phaedra. They are all in bloom now and they make winter easier to bear.

3 comments:

Intangible Hearts said...

Ouch, rejected twice for the same thing from the same agent! Oh, the agony....

Lindsay Cummings author said...

hey there Kae! I'm having trouble locating your querying guidelines for YA. It says on querytracker you are interested in it! can you direct me to your guidelines please?

thanks!

Lindsay Cummings

Kynelle Harris said...

Stories like this flat-out astonish me, in light of the fact that I've transmitted many dozens of queries and received barely a sniff, all while (I'm quite sure) paying exquisite detail to spelling/grammar/punctuation/format/requirements. To be certain that I'm doing everything asked and still get nothing but turn-downs, well, I gotta ask, are electronic emails so marvelous that agents can smell my breath?