April 2025 Update 🌸
Hello!
This is going to be a very brief monthly update because I just posted an update on March 31st, but I don’t want to shift my monthly updates to the end of the month—so here’s a mid-monthly update about some of the things I’m working on:
Currently (just finished!) drafting
I can’t talk about this brand new project yet, but it’s been a lot of fun to work on this month! And it’s the first new story I’ve drafted since editing TBOAD and 🕷💋WIP…so really the first new project I’ve worked on since November! My writing muscles feel rejuvenated after taking ~2 months to edit TBOAD (+ a few days just not writing or editing anything to give myself a tiny rest 😅) & my first draft writing quality is stronger than ever 💪 I hope I can talk about this project with you all soon… 🖤
Currently Querying
I sent out five queries for The Blood of a Divine last week—some new, some requeries—and I’m nervous all over again! This book has almost hit the end of the road for querying, although I refuse to shelve it because I’ve worked too hard to improve this book bit by bit over the last couple years, especially in the last few months—and now it feels better than ever, so I really can’t give up on it now ♥
And just in case you may have missed my earlier newsletters talking about it, when I say “requery”, I mean I’ve sent a queries to agents who already saw TBOAD when the query letter + sample pages were not as good as they are now, because I sent them only when I started querying in late summer 2023. Some agents encourage sending projects again if they’ve been significantly edited or it’s been an adequate amount of time to try again (due to some agents’ rejections being that a project may have not just been a right fit for their list at the time—frustrating, but it’s nice to know some agents are willing to take a look again at materials, and TBOAD has gone through 3 significant edits + it’s been almost 2 years now since I started querying some of those agents 💀)
If none of this works out, I will start querying 🕷💋WIP, but if agents want to rep that book but want nothing to do with TBOAD, they won’t be a good fit for me since I care a lot more about having TBOAD published & that’s a closer indication of the type of books I want to write more of in the future (which is why my next major book project is going to be FANTASY inspired by a historical setting, and it’ll have a sapphic storyline + swashbuckling + a terrifying sea goddess). I am open about saying 🕷💋WIP is the story I chose to write as my 2nd book because it is my ‘most marketable’ book idea and it might help me sell TBOAD, which I already knew wouldn’t be very ‘marketable’ before I even properly wrote it.
This has already been evidenced by the response from agents for this wip vs. TBOAD in recent pitch events on bluesky (no agents liked my TBOAD pitches but I got a few likes for 🕷💋WIP) so I may have better luck selling 🕷💋WIP even though it’s not the project I’m most excited about. But fantasy & horror are the two genre umbrellas I feel most excited about writing books in and if I have an agent, they better be excited to see me write more books like TBOAD (or even more books in the world of TBOAD…👀)
But, as I already mentioned before, self-publishing is starting to look more appealing to me, and getting TBOAD out to the world as a self-published project is Plan B if literally all my queries for it get rejected this year. If anyone has tips for self publishing on a tight budget, please reach out! 🙏
Currently Editing
Speaking of 🕷💋WIP, after taking about 3 months to edit TBOAD & also just take a small break from editing, I am finally starting my major edits for this book! 👏
After letting a few beta readers give me feedback on the general story in January & February, I have a couple narrative points to tweak, some scenes to add, and then I need to figure out where I can cut things down to keep the book at 100K or under. But this is also going to be the prose-refining stage, where I really get to make it pretty—which is the stage of editing I like the best, because it is in this stage when you get to really bring your story to life and also affirm that you are not a garbage writer (in my case at least, lol)
Currently Reading
I don’t talk enough about the books I read on this newsletter, so I’m hoping to start that now! I’m currently reading A Cruel Thirst by Angela Montoya and I’m about to start Isabel and the Rogue by Liana De La Rosa
And for the final item of this update, here are my querying stats for The Blood of a Divine:
Queries sent: 88
Rejections/No-response: 81
Full & Partial Requests: 3
Withdrawn query + Agent left industry: 2
Pending queries: 10
*some of these are requeries now, so the rejection numbers won’t be erased and that’s why the math doesn’t math*
Coming up:
*I hope to publish another #JustHistFicThings article soon, so keep a lookout for that! And if you would like to contribute to the subject matter/discussion, please let me know in the comments what your favorite Historical Romance tropes are & why ♥
*Um…it’s my birthday in a few weeks??? I am not that happy about it this year because I’ll be turning 34, which is an unattractive number to me (lol) but also because I had hoped during year 33, I would have accomplished one of my major goals—especially with my writing/getting published—and that didn’t happen.
I feel a bit rock bottom right now in multiple areas of my life and living in the US in the year 2025 has not helped, so I have no expectations that anything particularly good will happen to me in the next few weeks. But I know birthdays are just days and numbers are a social construct so 34 isn’t a bad age (although I’m probably just going to lie about the age I actually am until I turn 35 😂 + I still look like I’m 20 years old on the outside 🤷♀️)
Anyway, I hope April is treating everyone well ♥
-Jazmin
p.s. I celebrated Olive’s birthday on April 5 (it’s also the 5-year anniversary of when I adopted her!) and even though she didn’t know it was her birthday, she got spoiled with treats and I managed to take a couple cute photos of her with her party hat on 🥰
