May 2025 Update 💐
+ a final update on The Blood of a Divine (for now)
[I don’t know why the links didn’t work when I sent out this newsletter for the first time, but they work in the test emails, so if they don’t work when I send this one out again…please just copy + paste links if you plan to use them. Thank you 🙏]
Hi everyone 💐
Its been a while, but things have honestly been more busy and stressful in my personal life these past few weeks, so I haven’t focused too much on querying—but I have still received rejections :D
So let’s get these querying stats out of the way:
Queries sent: 89
Rejections/No-response: 83
Full & Partial Requests: 3
Withdrawn query + Agent left industry: 2
Pending queries: 8
(I have requeried 2 agents, so I’m adding that number to pending queries but keeping the rejection numbers)
On a serious note, I think it’s okay to take a break from querying when you’re not feeling so well mentally/emotionally and have more important life-related issues to deal with. So I haven’t worried too much about sending as many queries for The Blood of a Divine as I can in the past month because I’m more concerned about my financial/living situation, editing the book WIP that needs to be finished, and important irl things that I need to take care—instead of querying, which gives me mostly nothing but grief and wouldn’t be the wisest use of my time when I have so many other things to do that would be far more beneficial for me and my mental health.
And on that note, since it’s my birthday month, I feel a little less awkward about asking for help while I am struggling to find a job. I still feel awkward about it because I’m not used to asking others for financial help, but my situation is so dire now that mutual aid is really the only way I’m going to keep from hitting absolute rock bottom while job searching and I will take any help I can get and be so grateful for it ♥
Although I have both a bachelor’s and master’s degree and several years of work experience, I’m still having trouble getting even a part-time job in retail, restaurants, and hospitality services because academia/counseling jobs are so limited and competitive (and increasingly being defunded) that my only option now is to get a small part-time job—and even that is difficult because the economy in the US is in shambles. (and it has been since the Covid-19 pandemic started, despite what the news wants you to believe, and I know I’m not the only one who’s been in this situation for years)
If you are feeling generous and financially able, you may support/donate/give me a small birthday gift by downloading my short story, What the Rain Dragged In at The Cat’s Claw, at any price you name 💕
Story download link— https://jcondenunez.itch.io/what-the-rain-dragged-in-at-the-cats-claw
You don’t even have to actually read the story if it’s not interesting to you and you just want to donate/support me, but if you’re interested in High Fantasy and Romantic Comedy stories, I think you’ll enjoy it! 😊
If you choose to donate, I will be so appreciative 🙏💕 and if you are not able to donate, but you would like to spread the word, I made a post on Blue Sky that you can share.
I won’t lie, a large part of the reason I’ve been feeling a bit depressed on top of querying rejections and the state of the world is that I’ve also been getting constant rejections from job applications, and so much rejection without any wins for a long period of time—and worrying if I can even literally survive on my own while my bank account is shrinking and the price of everything is going up—is devastating for mental health. I try to do as best as I can because I am a mental health professional and I have a lot of strategies I have helped my own clients use to get through their own tough periods of time, but after such a long time dealing with all this…it really takes a toll, no matter how well adjusted your mental health is.
…and that is why I had major Birthday Blues this year and why I haven’t been as active on social media this past month 😢
Sorry to be so bleak with this newsletter, but on a positive note, lately I have also been feeling more prepared and optimistic about self publishing The Blood of a Divine 😊
Querying is getting me nowhere, the publishing industry seems bleaker than ever, and even some agents I planned to query or requery have had to give up their agenting jobs because of the economic situation or can’t keep up with their querying piles, and it’s all taking even LONGER or setting some agented authors on sub back to square one now that they’ve lost their agents. So many factors determine whether and when I can publish TBOAD in the traditional publishing space and are not up to me or the quality of my writing, and it’s already been almost 2 years since I started querying this book. I’m at the end of my rope with this whole process for TBOAD—and maybe it really does boil down to book prices and a 127K-word book simply too long for any agent to believe they can sell it as a debut as the main reason I’m not even getting full requests—but I know this book is worth being published and I refuse to “shelve” it.
I think it was still good for me to take this long and to get the feedback I needed from agents along this querying journey to really bring TBOAD to its full potential, but that’s also all the more reason I can’t give up on it—and if I can’t publish this book through tradpub and if I don’t want to wait several more years on top of the nearly two years I’ve already waited to hear an agent say they want to rep my book in order for this book to get out in the world…then I’m done waiting.
I’m over that imposter syndrome about not being a good writer—especially since I’ve been reading more and more new bestseller books lately that are literally filled with writing flaws that writers are told on a querying level not to make in our first few sample chapters, let alone the whole book 🙃 My writing in TBOAD is better than the writing in the bestseller books I’m reading, and I’ve also noticed this with my friends who went the indie route—whose books are so well-written and so much more satisfying than new tradpub bestsellers I’ve been reading this year! But they also couldn’t find an agent.
Writing quality does not equate to whether your book is ‘publishable’ or not, and I am sick of being held to a double standard to make my book *perfect* just to get an agent to request a full manuscript but still getting told it’s not “good enough” when that isn’t even true. (Plus, there’s a whole debacle I won’t go into—but which writers get to get signed with imperfect books and do multiple edits after being agented or even after having a book deal? What about writers who get debut deals before they’ve even finished writing the book? If these writers can get agents and deals, why are so many authors getting rejected by agents for not having a perfect ‘submission-ready’ manuscript? There’s a lot of hypocrisy in this industry, and it really all boils down to making publishers money, so you can’t even be sure the reasons you are rejected by agents or editors are even true—especially when so many publishing professionals will use semi personalized language in their form rejections)
ANYWAY.
I’m not going to shelve The Blood of a Divine because I know this book is ready to go out to the world. I know it’s good enough. But I think self-publishing may have to be the way to go—and honestly, that means I get to have control over book art, merch, and not cutting out things in my book to be more palatable to people who aren’t BIPOC or queer 👌 And if I want to expand it into a series, self-publishing means I don’t have to wait for a publisher’s greenlight to write those books… 👀
BUT I need money to self publish.
And my current financial situation makes that impossible at the moment, which is why I still kept holding out hope to query TBOAD for a second year in a row, since the biggest appeal of tradpub apart from widespread marketing is that you don’t have to pay for it from your own pocket. But it’s clear to me now that tradpub or not, I just want to get this book out to the world because I know it’s a good book and I know it will connect with so many people in important ways, and it already has ♥ and really the biggest thing holding me back now is money, but I have many indie author friends and seeing and helping them along their journeys has given me even more confidence that I can do it, too :) of course my goal is still to have my books sold everywhere, but TBOAD deserves to be out in the world. It’s ready.
But yeah—let’s be practical. I need to have a stable job/income saved in order to self publish properly. Right now I can’t even afford to commission artists for book art, so until I’m able to get into a financial situation where I can invest in launching TBOAD as a debut in the way I envision it, I have to wait and focus on other book projects. But just know that even if I stop querying TBOAD, I’m not giving up on getting this book published and my goal is to get it out to the world by the end of 2026 🖤
and on a more positive and celebratory note, I decided to make one last graphic post + share a writing snippet from TBOAD about the heart of this book—FAMILY.
TBOAD’s central story revolves around the tragic consequences of intergenerational trauma—on a pretty epic scale when gods are involved—but I think Ehren’s story is still very relatable to modern adult readers who know what it’s like to grapple with being from a *complicated* family. But TBOAD isn’t just about trauma or tragedy. It’s also about HEALING from trauma through the friendships, found family, and love our main cast of characters find along their literal journey to the Underworld 🤍
Anyway, if you like stories about gods, monsters, gothic settings, late 19th century Europe, an epic romance between a black cat x golden retriever with steamy cemetery kisses, BIPOC & LGBT rep, and complicated family relationships, this is the book for you!
I’m closing the chapter on The Blood of a Divine for now to focus on my final edits for my 🕷💋WIP before I start querying it, but this book WILL be published—and hopefully I can get that all started and let you all know about it sooner than later 🙏
Well, apart from my birthday (which I did nothing for lol) and a slew of query and job rejections, in the last few weeks I also submitted a short story to an anthology I really hope I get into (but 250 people apparently applied, so my chances are super slim 😭) and I took time on a weekend to volunteer at a queer wellness event in LA, which helped me feel a bit less sad about my birthday and life—and made me realize that even writing a book about queer characters is something positive and important that I can do to combat all the hatred in our world and help uplift my queer community—well, as long as I can publish it.
Even though I’ve been feeling more anxious and depressed lately than I’ve felt in years, I still believe that hope will win out in the end—but also I really need a job 😅 So that’s where most of my energy will be prioritized in the coming weeks. Please don’t miss me too much if I don’t share another newsletter or post much on social media for a few weeks.
With love,
Jazmin