Another day, another rejection
Another day, another rejection

Another day, another rejection

I feel that each day just isn’t com­plete without a rejec­tion, don’t you? [My best week was last spring when I received sev­en rejec­tions in sev­en days]


I received a very nice e‑rejection yes­ter­day from Brandi Bowles at Howard Morhaim. [not the agent I sub­mit­ted to on Monday] She’s the agent with whom I had an appoint­ment at the PNWA con­fer­ence in July. I’m dis­ap­poin­ted, of course, but not ter­ribly sur­prised, as it was a bit of a long shot: she’s not hugely into fantasy, but gave it a good try. Actu­ally her boss had told her to try fantasy, and she went into it will­ingly. In fact, I saw it as a good opportunity.

Why did I sign up to speak to her when she does­n’t “do” fantasy? Well, here’s the tricky thing. Her agency does rep­res­ent fantasy, which is why I chose her. And I tried to get a meet­ing with Michelle Gra­jkowski but was unsuc­cess­ful. It’s a bit of a gamble some­times at these con­fer­ences, when you get to sign up for one appoint­ment and just hope to get a chance to speak to someone else. There was­n’t a lot of oppor­tun­ity to run into agents at the PNWA con and chat in an off­hand way. I don’t know where they went to hang out in between work­shop ses­sions, but it was rare to catch a glimpse of agents and edit­ors, unless they were eat­ing in the res­taur­ant. And maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like to inter­rupt someone while she’s eating.

Any­way, it’s easy for me to look back and say, “I should have signed up with a dif­fer­ent agent.” But if anoth­er agent had been inter­ested, and had ulti­mately rejec­ted my MS, I’d be say­ing the same thing about them. I made as edu­cated a choice as I could based on the agents’ sales and all, and it did­n’t pan out this time. She said very nice things about my writ­ing, and I take those seriously.

I can still query the oth­ers. And what’s more, I will.