Blog post January 26, 2012
Today in the mail, I received another rejection notice. It wasn’t too hard to throw up my defenses and pretend that I wasn’t disappointed. After all, I’m getting pretty good at this rejection business. This is the second one in two weeks. The editor at HarperCollins passed on my manuscript but said she felt my protagonist was strong. The second was an agent at Maria Carvainis Agency in NYC. While also bad news, this agent said she “found the premise compelling and the characters interesting.” She added, “I felt the dialogue had a tendency to feel stilted, and some of the narrative (particularly internal monologues/thoughts) was a little cliché.”
Finally, something to work with! Although I disagree about the dialog (I think that’s one of my strong points), I know I can use help in the internal monolog/thoughts area. Because I know that I don’t know everything, I’m going to look at the dialog again, as well. Also, as my husband pointed out, these critiques indicate she read the entire 100 pages I sent. That tells me that she was interested enough to get through that much—she didn’t dump it in the recycle bin after the first page.
So, I’m on the right track. Just need to keep at it. This week, I sent off my entire manuscript to the Public Safety Writers’ Association (of which I am a member) for a summary edit. I’m looking forward to their suggestions.
I started the sequel to Probable Cause last week, and so far, I think I like this story even better.
Still have two queries outstanding but time to send out more.
My husband, Danny and I came up with a reasonable schedule so I can dedicate quality time to my stories. In the past few days, I’ve racked up over 2000 words. Very promising! It’s a blessing to have a supportive husband!
