Yesterday I requeried Gemma Cooper at The Bent Agency with The Peaceful and Just. I sent it to her mid–July and received a reply stating that she was too loaded up to look at it, resubmit in August. From her I got a nice and immediate e-mail telling what she was looking for (children’s and YA), her submission guidelines, and an offer to resubmit again if I didn’t follow them (I did, so good to go.) It’s always nice to get some form of acknowledgement that the submissions actually arrive.

Today I sent The Peaceful and Just to Sara Sciuto at Fuse Literary. Since I am still waiting to hear from Gordon Warnock at the same agency with Chivalry, I figured I would sent what I’m currently working on to another agent at that same agency. Also, I read her twitter post at #MSWL saying she was looking for YA fantasy with well imagined settings and rich characters, and immediately changed my query letter to reflect my feelings that I have created exactly that. I was depressed all day on Friday, actually, after reading that she was tired of novels about dystopian futures (of course, that is also my setting, and that’s what depressed me, because if she’s tired of it, then everyone’s tired of it.) Then I thought, what the hell, that’s really just background stuff, and it’s the story and the characters that matter, and dammit, my characters and my story are awesome. So I conquered my depression and sent it anyway. Hope you like it, Sara, since you also sent an immediate reply saying you will only get back to me if you’re interested. LIKE MY STORY, SARA. YOU WON’T BE SORRY.

Then I decided to send Chivalry off to Sarah Jane Freymann, since Sarah Jane likes edgy YA fiction and it was her associate Jessica Sinsheimer who actually came up with the hashtag #MSWL, which stands for Manuscript Wish List. So there you go, another bunch of queries out, a bunch of work still to do.