![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/31.media.tumblr.com\/0fbad914576481f28fdac6e56a84a3cb\/tumblr_inline_n3knq1dSZq1sqr9zc.jpg?w=700&ssl=1\")
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During this past February\u2019s Love Is Murder writers conference, I sucked up my courage and tried to sell my YA spy novel, The Boy Who Knew Too Much<\/em>, during a pitch-a-thon or pitch-a-palooza event. Essentially this is speed dating where you have four minutes with an agent or editor to make them believe you have a book worth publishing. Despite my pathological avoidance of self-promotion, I did well. All but one of the people I spoke with asked me to proceed to the next step of the process, sending sample chapters or a synopsis via e-mail.<\/p>\n More than two months have passed since then, and the only responses\u00a0had been two kindly worded rejections. I figured, perhaps belatedly, that it was time to query more agents and spent this last week crafting a pitch letter.<\/p>\n Friday morning, I checked my email on my iPod and saw that I had a response from one of the editors from Love Is Murder. I opened the e-mail hoping this rejection would let me down as easily as the others. It took a moment to realize this wasn\u2019t a rejection. It read, \u201cWe are interested in reading the rest of the story.\u201d This was followed by a request for the full manuscript. Not a bad way to start the day.<\/p>\n This is definitely encouraging, but being the cautious type I immediately reminded myself the result could just be rejection at a higher level. But at least I have reached a higher level.<\/p>\n Also, I don\u2019t have an agent and I wonder if it is wise for me to deal directly with a publisher. Sure, I won\u2019t be giving away 10 percent of my earnings, but agents get that money by looking out for their authors\u2019 interests. When I received that e-mail, I had two letters sitting on the table by the door ready to be mailed to agents (yes, actual physical letters to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service). I considered rewriting the letters to mention a publisher has expressed interest in the book, but\u00a0decided to mail them as is. I can add this new information to any queries I make next week. Perhaps I will send a short e-mail to those two agents: \u201cSince I mailed my query, a publisher has expressed interest in my book.\u201d Can\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n I did send the full manuscript to the publisher on Friday. I don\u2019t see any point in delaying. I\u2019m not making a commitment, and they could still reject me. It\u2019s just another step towards publication, and a promising one. A publisher wants to read The Boy Who Knew Too<\/em> Much, and that has to be a good thing, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During this past February\u2019s Love Is Murder writers conference, I sucked up my courage and tried to sell my YA spy novel, The Boy Who Knew Too Much, during a pitch-a-thon or pitch-a-palooza event. Essentially this is speed dating where you have four minutes with an agent or editor to make them believe you have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[290,171,471,172,131,132],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-boy-who-knew-too-much","tag-love-is-murder","tag-publishing","tag-the-boy-who-knew-too-much","tag-writing","tag-ya-books","tag-ya-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5foza-3s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}