Welcome

Welcome to the (un)official site for science-fiction and fantasy writer Bryan R. Durkin!

Monday, May 27, 2013

Query Letter Hell: The Return

I apologize, in a sort of formal, noncommittal way, about not posting here recently. May has been very busy for me in a variety of ways. I started my summer firefighting job again, about three weeks earlier than expected, and it's been keeping me pretty busy. In addition, I've also been finishing up some beta-reading projects for a couple of fellow writers. It was a process that was educational and useful for me, and I hope it was for them, as well.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Kricket's Song got some modifications, mostly in the form of a couple of scene additions that further develop the relationship between Jonah and Mouse as best friends, as well as some things that I hope help clarify why Jonah is risking his life trying to find Katerina--when, in all honesty, she's not presented as the perfect fiancee to begin with.

I also got a much needed new perspective on my query letter efforts. As I've lamented on here before, 8 different drafts of query letters (maybe more) have met with form rejections or no responses. I haven't sent that many queries, numerically speaking. But I HAVE done considerable research on the agents, and the book itself has gone through significant polishing and editing, and had been vetted for any major flaws. So I feel like if I had a good query letter, I would've gotten at least a personalized rejection or two. That leads me to believe my query letter itself probably isn't up to par. Hence, following the much needed new perspective, I've written a 9th query letter draft. I've submitted it to Query Letter Hell on Absolute Write, and I guess we'll see what sort of response I get. I'm hoping it's at least apparent the new draft isn't a first attempt at a query letter. I'm also hoping more than one person can agree on what's wrong with it. Last time I tried QLH, I had ten different people saying ten different things, and some of those contradicted each other.

In the meantime, this summer is looking to be a very busy one. I will continue doing my best to write, on Kricket's Song as needed, as well as getting some forward momentum going with Kricket's Key once again (the first draft). I'm also brainstorming a couple other projects for down the road.

As for what will happen after summer, well, that's anyone's guess. I might find a new job, or I might end up unemployed with nothing but time. And I just might go on a little epic quest of my own. Here's hoping.

2 comments:

  1. Are you single? :D I live in Josephine Co. and recently purchased a gun. I ran across your facebook and you seem like you'd be an awesome instructor ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Depends on what you want instruction in. If it's basic self defense, then I could keep you busy for days. If you want high speed, low drag, SWAT tactics training...let me know when you find an instructor, cuz I want some of that too!

    ReplyDelete