I’m so glad you asked.

Welcome back to (or welcome to if this is your first visit) my website. After a year of being a bit hyper-focused on other, related things, I am attempting to build out more content on this site.

Today I am writing about one of the things that has been absorbing my concentration and typing fingers:

Querying my Novel.

(Imagine an ominous music snippet sounding loudly here.)

“Querying” does not in this case mean that I am asking my novel questions — although the writing process for me includes a lot of seeking answers to puzzles like “What am I writing about?” “Why?” “Who are these characters?” “What are they doing and why are they doing it?” “What is at stake?” “What happens next?”

Before I start a story or novel or play or, blog post, or sometimes, an email, or whatever it is I am setting about to write, I try to figure out the answers to at least some of those questions. Those answers may change — and almost certainly will if I’m writing a fictional story, be it play or novel or short story — but I have to know some percentage of what I’m trying to put on the magic page before I start.

BUT “querying a novel” is a specific process in the journey to the Holy Grail of seeing experiencing one’s work being published.

If a novelist (or memoirist or other non-fiction author) is seeking publication through the “traditional” path, that path will almost always require going through an agent. An approach to an agent to enquire about representation is called a “query.” For non-fiction, it involves (as I understand it) a book proposal.

For a novel, it is an introduction of the novel and the author to the prospective agent and their agency. In a tight letter (300 words is what I see most) the author introduces the novel, its genre, what it’s about, and explains why the author is interested in this agent / agency. Much advice exists about how to do this. There are seminars, workshops, etc.

And many agencies / agents will have specific details about what they want a query to contain.

Which I find to be very helpful.

So I am in the process of doing that — querying agents.

Different authors also have different approaches. I have various drafts of how I present the same basic information. The number of those drafts is growing, as I research each agent / agency to learn as much as I can about how best to present to that particular agent or agency.

Once a query is submitted, the author waits.

And queries more.

And researches more agents.

And, works on the next project.

I write, I query, I play with and / or bother the cat, I go about doing all the other things in my life that do not involve sitting in front of a computer screen.

Back to it…

Thanks for stopping by. There will be a mailing list sign-up if you’d like to receive no more than ten newsletters per year. The content of the site will also be increasing.

There may even be an eventual cat picture. (We are in negotiations…)

Peace.