LIFE IS SHORT. . .PLAY HARD

One of the tasks I've been working on while my beta readers are "engrossed" in School Spirit, has been to compile a list of agents who read Godtalk, my last young adult novel, and prioritize who I was going to send School Spirit to first. These would be the people who said in their rejections something like, "This doesn't quite work for me, but if you ever have anything else. . ."

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Wi-Fi.

Through a combination of research and happenstance (and the following of a number agents' blogs), I discovered two new agents who have excellent reputations and who I felt might be a good fit for my writing and personality. Both of these agents, as it turns out, write very interesting, humorous, and user-friendly blogs.

The question, then, was this: Should I wait until my readers finish SS and work through another draft or two until it's ready to go out and, consequently, not contact these two new agents until--at best--sometime around November or December? Or should I give them a shot at Godtalk and, if they are even the least bit interested, send the School Spirit stuff by the end of the year?

One indicator, I thought, would be the quality of Godtalk, a manuscript I haven't looked at objectively for probably a year or so. So I dug it out, blew off the dust, and opened it up. And it held up. I was happy with the quality of the writing, knew the plot was well-structured, and the opening (the "hook," as they say) was better than I remembered. It's funny what three or four peer responses and five drafts can do!

So I thought, "Why not?" What do I have to lose?" Let's see what they have to say. Godtalk is a book that is very close to my heart and is just sitting there, anyway. If I thought that the book sucked, I would have left it in the closet, but the most common complaint I kept getting was that it was "just too religious." Since one of the two agents' website says that "quirky is good," I'm hoping that makes Godtalk a good fit for her. So I just finished sending out two queries and the first five pages, per their submissions guidelines. Wish me luck.

The bottom line, I figured, is as Nike once said, "Life's short. Play hard."

I'll keep you posted.