Tag: querying
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What My Pass Means Part 2: My Most Used Pass
Hello querying authors, I’m here to help explain a bit about what I mean by my passes. Due to many different reasons, I’m unable to give everyone their own pass specific to their pitch package. Yes, sometimes you get something a bit more personal if I have a specific thing I can identify– those I…
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What My Pass Means Part 1: Why Agents Use Form Responses
As a querying author sometimes it seems impossible to figure out what is not working with your pitch and pages. Is it the pitch? Are the pages not working? Is this the wrong genre? There are so many questions that can come up, with little to no answer given in passes. First, agents do their…
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Author/Agenting Boundaries
My therapist likes to remind me I have moral OCD and think in black and white to my detriment. But some somethings are so unmovable for me I won’t change. One of them is holding strict boundaries between being an agent and being an author. What are these boundaries? Let me spell them out so…
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When To Nudge an Agent
I have been getting a lot of nudges, most of them very useful and urgent (so many offers of rep, yay!!). But I have gotten a few that compelled me to write this blog post. When you query, you send your pitch out into the abyss and wait and wait and wait. Literary agents are…
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Looking for a Agent? Here’s what to look for!
Being in the query trenches is brutal. There is no sugar coating it. You are grueling over a piece of art that you put out into the world to get passed on over and over again. That’s the reality of it. Yet, there is the hope that one person will like your manuscript enough to…
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Red Flags in My Query Inbox
I was inspired by an editor from Sourcebook, who came and gave a talk back in June 2024 to The Purcell Agency writers. She did a great segment on what are red flags when she’s looking at submissions and I wanted to do the same. Here are a few red flags I see in my…
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Why I Prioritize Reading for Pleasure as an Agent
There has been a big learning curve on how I handle my time now that I’m authoring, mothering, agenting, and working my full-time job. It’s a lot. And one thing that has been the source of guilt (on two sides of the coin) has been the reason I started doing most of my things, and…
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Updated MSWL
If you haven’t seen on Threads or Twitter (X), I have re-opened queries to BIPOC authors. Here is the link to the tweet. While I will remain open to BIPOC, through pitch events there are still opportunities for me to see your work. Stay tuned to my X profile so you can see if I’m…
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2023 Recap: Agenting
Of all the things that happened in 2023, I would say this is the biggest. Becoming an agent is something I realized that I should have tried to do sooner if I knew how much joy it would bring me, and how secure in my abilities I felt. I am so excited for this next…
Christine Kelly Reads and Writes 