GOING TRADITIONAL: Intro

For the next few months, and into the new year, you all will be seeing a reoccurring entry: GOING TRADITIONAL. I have decided to go the traditional route with my Draven Atreides, Teenage FBI series and will start sending out query letters. These posts will chronicle my progress towards representation and acquiring a book deal. The highs and lows of my journey will be reported here as responses come in.

The following is a list of agencies where I'm planning to send query letters:

Firebrand Literary Agency (1st choice)
The Nelson Literary Agency (2nd choice)
Jane Rostren Agency (3rd choice)
The Knight Agency
Ethan Ellenberg Agency
Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency
Barry Goldblatt Literary LLC
Andrea Brown Literary Agency
Writers House
The Prospect Agency
Folio Literary Management
Lowenstein-Yost (4th choice)
Anderson Grinberg Literary Management
Faye Bender Literary Agency
Barer Literary LLC
Noble Literary Agency
Harvey Klinger Inc
William Morris Agency
Trident Media Group
3 Seas Literary Agency
Full Circle Literary Agency
Dunham Literary Inc
The Chudney Agency
Dunow, Carlson and Lerner
Kathryn Green Literary Agency
Rosemary Stimola Literary Studio
Browne and Miller
Irene Goodman Literary Agency
Larsen-Pomada
Laura Dail Literary Agency
Artists Literary Group
Belfrey Literary Agency.

Thirty-two agencies seems like a lot, so I'm glad I had a pretty big list. My first choice, as seen above, is to be repped by Firebrand. I read one of their author's blogs (Lauren Barnholdt) on a daily basis--even took an online course taught by her--and received a good vibe about one of the agents there. My other choices stem from an online group. Agents from these agencies were guests on a couple of forums to which I am a member and I found them to be very personable and helpful.

Where I'm at right now: I'm in the final stages of going over my MS myself. It's been professionally edited twice and those changes have been made. Once the editing has been done, it needs to be formatted (page numbers and headers). I'm also working on re-vamping my query letter (something I learned to do in Lauren's class) and writing a detailed synopsis of the book.

In reading the submission guidelines for some of the above agencies, they require a 3-5 page synopsis of the book. Basically, you're telling them what the novel is about--hitting all the high points, of course--and including the ending. For someone like me where the norm is to write the novel and then promptly forget about it, writing a detailed synopsis is a new process. As I'm editing each chapter I've been writing down a chapter summary, so that I'll have something to work with when I start typing up the synopsis.

So, cross your fingers, kiss the blarney stone, conjure up an abundance spell and wish me luck.