December 2024 Update 🎁
+end of year thoughts & ramblings
Hi everyone,
I hope you’re all doing well at the end of this year! I’m still wrapping up work on 🕷💋 wip but I plan to take a bit of a writing break while I have betas look at my book. And then once I edit/revise my book as needed, it’s off to the query trenches again! (Unless I get an offer for The Blood of a Divine first… 🤞😭)
Once again, I don’t have much to update on, except that I got a few end-of-year rejections from agents I sent queries to back in summer and spring. They seem to finally be cleaning out their inboxes 👍
So here are my updated stats:
Queries sent: 81
Rejections/No-response: 71
Full & Partial Requests: 2
Withdrawn query + Agent left industry: 2
Pending queries: 9
I was able to brush off the last few months’ rejections without barely feeling anything…but for some reason, the latest rejection I received absolutely destroyed me 💔 (and I received it the same night I posted about my MC Ehren with celebratory art & a new quote from TBOAD)
Those second-chance queries (the times I was asked to re-query agents after they rejected me once before because they liked my book pitches on twitter) have ended up being the most painful rejections. 1/3 of those did turn into a partial request after just a couple days (eventually rejected), but the other 2 were very painful because of how much more hope I had for them than the average query. It also hurt more because of the long time/investment in my projects the agents took and all the hope I had to put into those queries for months of silence…only to get rejected AGAIN and given no clear inclination as to why they didn’t want TBOAD 😢
I’ve seen discourse about whether or not agents should personalize their rejections, and my opinion is that (apart from the workload it adds to a swamped agent inbox) unless they are going to give actionable, constructive, and positive feedback, don’t bother personalizing. I received two very helpful personalized rejections last year that helped me revamp the way I wrote my first few chapters AND how I chose to market my book. I was very grateful for those responses, even if I didn’t get to requery those agents with TBOAD.
On the other hand… I received a personalized rejection earlier this year that exhibited total unprofessionality from an agent who only had negative things to critique about my book…that weren’t even things that happened in my book or in my opening pages—showing that she didn’t closely read my query or sample pages after being the one to request that I query her from a pitch event—another example of an investment of high interest and time on an agent’s part (and hope on my part)…only to receive an insulting email 4 months later with no positive feedback on my writing 😬
And now, this latest maybe-personalized rejection I received…isn’t very helpful, either, because the agent gave me vague and “subjective” feedback:
This was a kind rejection, at least (much kinder than the previous personalized rejection I got, anyway) but I honestly would have preferred a form rejection that didn’t mention anything about my “line level” writing…because a form rejection would have been just as helpful (or unhelpful) and not make me question everything about my writing style and whether I’m actually a good writer at all 😅
So…I spiraled a bit the other day…
(I think part of it was also the fact that, thanks to the algorithm this week, my posts on Instagram and Twitter have been getting barely any love, but I also wondered…am I just unlikeable and embarrassing myself on every social media platform when I share anything I write but everyone is too nice to tell me the truth? Yeah, I REALLY spiraled lol)
But I’m okay now… 😅 I’m choosing to focus on finishing my second book and the fact that I still have a full request out for TBOAD. I’m very anxious about what the reply will be, and I was told by the agent to nudge if I don’t get a reply by the end of the year (so…in less than two weeks!) While I don’t want this to be the end of the road for TBOAD, I’ve kind of run out of options when it comes to getting the book trad-pubbed and I’ll have to make an important decision for what happens to this book next year if things don’t pan out with my 9 remaining queries.
I expressed this thought recently on BlueSky—and while I think it’s nice that people replied to tell me to not give up on querying it and to keep sending it out to as many agents as possible…
I have been querying this book for nearly a year and a half and I’ve been engaging in many pitch events throughout this entire time. I have spent that time thoroughly researching and querying as many agents as possible who would be a fit for my book’s genre blend—starting this process months before I started querying TBOAD. Now I can look at a BlueSky agent starter list and recognize most of the names—because they’re all agents who rejected me.
I am tired of querying this book. I think it’s alright for anyone to take a break from sending new queries for a book, especially when you have other projects to focus on. I know it wouldn’t be the end of me pitching this book even if I did get an agent, but I’m feeling very tired after getting almost nothing but rejections for a year and a half…and that energy could be better spent elsewhere.
Speaking of, I have a new book that’s almost complete that I need to focus on getting query-ready, since that can lead to representation for both of my books!
And the thing about technically being able to query 100 more agents than I already have…I am a Mexican-American woman and I’m not straight. The book I’ve been querying features BIPOC & LGBTQ+ characters in the main cast. I know I haven’t queried all the agents in the world who will take a historical fantasy book, but I’ve done a pretty good job reaching out to as many agents as I could who would take a book like mine from an author like me (and there are many agents who would have liked the premise of my book except for a few non-negotiable specific things that show up in my book—so I didn’t query them, and it is frustrating to have to weed those small anti-mswl’s out and it takes a lot of time to do all this thorough agent/mswl research. So trust me, I have TRIED to query as many agents as I possibly could, but I have reached the bottom of that barrel a year and half in!)
Finding an agent who fits *my* needs is just as important as my book fitting an agent’s MSWL (manuscript wishlist, for my non-writing friends). And to be quite honest, there are a lot of agents out there I considered who haven’t shown evidence of being someone who would protect me as an ethnic minority and a queer person in the publishing industry. There have been many who gave me off-vibes (or, The Ick) and I have trusted my gut to not query these agents because I couldn’t trust them to see my vision and be an effective advocate (for example, querying a white straight man or anyone with a history of mistreating their BIPOC clients is the last thing I want to do).
In an industry where we get paid less, where we get signed less, where what types of stories we get to have published is limited, and where we have to do a lot of our own marketing because our books don’t align with the bestselling Booktok titles (mostly read by white straight women)—it’s a whole different ballgame when your ethnic category makes up only 4% of the publishing industry. That number is even smaller if you’re queer, which I am.
So yes. I’m just as picky about who I query as agents are about which authors they’ll offer representation to. Because it’s a partnership. And if I don’t have a partner who can understand, empathize, and advocate for me on at least one level of my identity, how can I trust them to champion me in an industry where it will be particularly brutal for a bisexual latina writer?
So can I query up to 200 agents? Sure. Do I want to? No.
I have queried every agent I have wanted to query in the last year and a half for TBOAD, and for so many reasons (including wrong timing, too high of a wordcount for a debut to be considered, an agent having a similar book already on their list, etc.) it didn’t quite work out. But all a writer needs to get represented is one yes—and it has to be the right yes—and maybe TBOAD won’t get me my agent, but that doesn’t mean that 🕷💋 won’t and that the agent who takes on that book won’t also love TBOAD.
Anyway, just needed to put that out there. I *CHOSE* to stop sending new queries for TBOAD a couple months ago. I didn’t want to wait until I exhausted every agent who took my book’s genre—because once I actually briefly considered querying agents I really wasn’t sure would be a good fit for me, or if I even really wanted them to be my agent… I knew that was time to stop because that would have been an act of desperation. And I’m not desperate to have *any* agent. I want to have the right agent who will love my books and see my vision, and champion me for my whole writing career! I want a partner who I will never have to question as to whether they understand the obstacles I face as a BIPOC & LGBT+ writer or why it’s important for me to write the stories I want to write.
Anyway, I appreciate the sentiment when people say I shouldn’t stop querying a book until I find an agent… but I think what many white & heterosexual writers need to understand is that BIPOC & LGBTQ+ writers have it much harder while querying. There aren’t 200 agents out there for our books, and we can’t just query every single agent in our genre because there is much more at stake for us if we end up with the wrong agent—and far less agents are going to even like us or be as interested in our projects than they would be if we were white and/or straight.
Moving on…
Sorry for that unpleasant aside—but at the end of the year, the last thing I’m thinking about is continuing to query The Blood of a Divine! (But just in case any agents or editors wander onto this newsletter, here is the Agent Guide for it 😉)
I still love this book. I loved being able to recently share it with a new close writing friend I made this year and getting to hear how much they loved it as they read 🥺 I know this is still the book of my heart because I keep thinking about these characters and what would happen next in the story and what a sequel series of books in this universe would entail. Just because I’m done sending new queries for TBOAD doesn’t mean I’m giving up on this book ❤
But it is very hard this time of year to see everyone else’s lists of accomplishments while it feels like you haven’t accomplished anything or really gotten anywhere farther than where you were a year before. But that’s something I want to try working on…because it makes me feel bad to see other people speak about their accomplishments—but it shouldn’t make me feel bad about myself.
I have a lot more to say on the subject about why this happens to me, but when I started drafting it, I went into it from a mental health perspective, and because it’s really a complex thing… it got a bit long for a monthly newsletter, haha… So I think I’ll save it for a newsletter next month, and then I can really dive in on the subject and maybe help other people confront those negative emotions associated with comparison, feeling like a failure for not reaching our writing/publishing goals, why they happen + how to begin to take a different, healthier approach when we see or think about compiling ‘end of year’ lists of accomplishments 🤍
So I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions, but something I want to try doing next year and for the rest of my life is to not let other people’s successes make me feel bad about myself 💚 I want to work on not getting down about myself just because good things happen to other people while they’re not happening for me. I want to be better about swiping away or completely closing an app when I see good news to keep myself from feeling bad—because avoidance is only a temporary solution, and not actually a solution at all. I want to work on being more vocal about celebrating those people for their successes even while I feel the sting of failure, because I know I’d want to be celebrated too when I eventually succeed.
And lastly, because I’ve been bitten by the Wicked bug (the story is inspirational and I love the soundtrack and Wicked might be the only good thing that happened for society in November??? ) I’m going to share Defying Gravity, a song I listen to like 10 times a day lately lol because I love it so much, because it’s so inspiring, and because it makes me cry when I think of the lyrics in connection with my own dreams of being a writer 😭🖤
So yes, I think I *WILL* try defying gravity when it comes to publishing and not let everything I’m stacked up against statistically—because of the color of my skin, because of my ancestry, because of my sexuality, and because of how difficult it is to be successful in this industry for anyone who isn’t even facing all the obstacles I am—bring me down and keep me from continuing to work towards becoming the thing I’ve dreamed of becoming nearly all my life.
A published novelist.
Thank you for reading if you got this far 💕 This wasn’t the most cheerful monthly update, but I’m not feeling particularly cheerful this December (considering the state of the world and piling up rejections this month and other things in my life not going as well as they could be 🔥)
I don’t expect to have a better new year and I’m not going to say 2025 is *my* year, but 5 is my lucky number… so something good better happen for me finally, damn it!
And with that…take care & good luck with the family gatherings this holiday season if you celebrate! I wish you all nothing but health and happiness for the new year ❤
-Jazmin