Hello all,
This monthly update is a little later than my usual monthly updates…because there hasn’t been much to update! lol
But I have some good news I can finally share + an update on 🕷💋 WIP, for anyone interested in how that project is going + a brand new snippet from that book 😊
I will officially be attending the Historical Novel Society North America conference this June in Las Vegas! 🥳
As the name suggests, this is a conference for Historical Fiction writers, readers, and publishing professionals, and it will be the first official writing conference I attend! Silvia Moreno-Garcia is going to be the special guest (😱) and several other published HistFic writers will be attending, speaking, and leading workshops. I’m very excited to learn a lot, develop my HistFic craft, meet with a mentor, make publishing connections, and just meet more of my HistFic people! (there will also be history-themed pub trivia and a costume event??? a lot of fun for a history nerd like me! lol) And I will also get to finally meet writer friends I’ve only talked to on the internet ❤
This is also only happening for me because I applied for a scholarship to attend the conference…and I was chosen as an award recipient! ✨ It felt great to take a leap of faith on myself and apply for something I wanted so badly—and for it to actually work out :’) I truly am grateful to the HNS for giving me and other writers from diverse, less advantaged backgrounds the opportunity to attend this dream of a writing conference—and I intend to make the most of it! 💕🥂
Now on to the writing updates…
All beta readers have officially finished reading 🕷💋 WIP and gave me feedback!
I sent out my MS at an earlier stage than I usually let other people read my work (the horror of being perceived with work that isn’t perfect! 😱) but it helped me figure out big picture things I needed to adjust before I perfected the prose in this book.
It’s something I learned the hard way after I started querying TBOAD. Even though that book went through 3 full edits before I queried, it took months for me to get personalized constructive feedback from agents to fix major areas of improvement—which is very rare to get at all while querying—which makes beta readers so valuable!
What’s next?
Well, if you’ve been keeping up with my TBOAD querying journey, you’ll know that I received an amazing partial request in January that included specific guidance for how to strengthen my writing, so after I edited and submitted my partial to that agent, I’ve been going through the rest of TBOAD and editing it with that specific feedback in mind.
It’s been a very good learning process for me (and made me feel even more confident about my writing!) and I’m going to finish editing TBOAD before I get started on editing 🕷💋 WIP. Even though it’ll have to wait, editing TBOAD has helped me develop a stronger approach for when I eventually edit 🕷💋 WIP and I’m excited to get back to it!
And then... I’ll start querying 🕷💋 WIP!
*After doing at least 2 more full edits
*And only IF I need to query the book by the time I’m done editing the final draft... 🤞
Anyway, in reward for your patience/investment in reading this far, here is a brand new writing snippet from 🕷💋 wip 😊
And finally…querying stats!
Queries sent: 86
Rejections/No-response: 76
Full & Partial Requests: 3
Withdrawn query + Agent left industry: 2
Pending queries: 10
I still have yet to hear back from the agent who requested a partial—and no matter how that turns out, I think that agent’s feedback was very helpful to me as a writer and TBOAD will be a better book for it—but I also REALLY HOPE IT WORKS OUT 😭 not just because it’s my only partial out right now, but this agent’s response was friendly and very professional and so much more helpful than most of the feedback I’ve gotten during my querying journey, and this is exactly the kind of agent I would love to partner with… ✨🤞✨🤞✨🤞
Anyway, February is almost over, but I hope it’s been kind to everyone ❤
As always, I’m open to comments just to chat about what I’ve written in these newsletters and any suggestions/requests for anything you’d like to see from me! I’ve been drowning in drafting and editing since December lol but I do want to get a Historical Fiction article out again soon… let me know if there’s any particular topic you’d like me to write about (for my own books or Histfic research in general!)
Take care,
-Jazmin