query letters Archives | Rebecca Clare Smith

In Need Of Some Advice

Recently, I’ve been toying with the idea of ebooks. I have three fully written novels ranging from 87k to 120k words and they are hiding somewhere in my computer with their fourth partially written counterpart and the plans for the following instalments. It will probably do me a disservice to mention that I started writing these when I was fifteen (just six short years ago), but they have been through quite rigorous editing, I assure you.

I’ve tried querying the series before (mostly when I admit I was too naive to understand the query process) but with no success. My more recent queries, at least, were a little more experienced, but still no change in the response they received.

Perhaps this is because I’m just not very good at querying or perhaps it’s because my story is too much like too many others or maybe my writing style just isn’t likeable enough or agents have far too many queries to take anything from mine. And since those lacklustre responses to my queries, I’ve realised that I may never get Jo’s story published in through traditional routes.

Continue reading “In Need Of Some Advice”

When I Am King You Will Be First Against The Wall

I’ve sent an email query or two today. This is after receiving an email rejection from an agent. As much as this isn’t what I wanted, I am glad that the literary agent in question got back to me as quickly as she did. In fact, I’m just glad that she got back to me. I appreciate that agents are busy people and that they might not be able to get back to everyone, but sometimes just the impersonal rejection letters are appreciated. After all, that means they’ve definitely looked at it and that it hasn’t somehow been missed and overlooked. That’s perhaps one of the things I worry about most. I also feel bad for those people who are rejected just because they have no idea how to write a proper query letter. I admit that I was one of them and without joining twitter and following agents and writers I would still have absolutely no idea. I also admit that I’m terrible at writing letters. I always spend time worrying how I come across in them. With snail mail, this worrying is prolonged. At least with email, I have the chance to redeem myself quickly with a response and an apology for my cackhanded (this means dreadful and is probably a colloquialism) approach.

On another note, the computer mouse is aptly named. One of my cats, Baby (he’s a boy despite his name), enjoys watching the mouse on the screen. It’s quite amusing. He likes to follow it with his eyes. He’s very much a laptop cat. Sometimes he even sits with his paws on the touch pad and watches the mouse move as he moves his paws. He also likes youtube videos of other cats.

I must also apologise to the readers of this blog. I am aware that I have gotten slightly carried away with the political things going on in the country at the moment. That’s mostly because nobody seems to know what the hell is going on. Even the politicians are stumped. Still, I promised a new flash fiction piece and I shall certainly be writing one soon. My intentions were to write one before now, but I have regrettably been quite busy. I started writing Absolute Power and I am getting rather excited about it. Absolute Power is a critical book in regards to the series. Lots of things are due to happen in this book and I am going to relish them all.

(Lyrics in the title are from Paranoid Android by Radiohead… but I prefer Sia Furler’s version)

& The Cure Ain’t Aspirin

It’s been days since I made an entry. For that, I’m sorry and apologise intensely if you felt you were missing out on my incredibly exciting life, but, if truth be told, I really haven’t felt much like blogging. This is really all because of Saturday.

I went out to see a friend on Saturday during the day. I hadn’t seen him in quite a while so it was nice to have a catch up, plus I think he needed to have a chat and get some things off his chest. Poor little worrier, he is. Anyway, it was nice to have a chat with him. We rarely see each other because we lead such busy lives… apart from me. So really, only he leads a busy life. He has a habit of forgetting to see his friends a lot, though. Most of the time, I don’t think he does it on purpose. He’s just a bit scatty. Anyway, my intentions for the day were to see him for a catch up and then watch Doctor Who followed by writing a piece of flash fiction. The last two things were not achieved, as you may have guessed.

My dog hadn’t been well since the previous day. He was getting really old and his back legs were going through arthritis, but on the Friday.. he just refused to eat. He didn’t want to eat anything. Even stuff he really likes. By about five o’clock on Saturday my mum was getting really upset about it. So she called the vet… And we ended up going to the emergency clinic with him in Bridlington. We had to use a blanket to lift him up into the car because he couldn’t do it with his back legs… and the vet had to help us get him out of the car and across to the surgery. It was horrible. She said he was just old and that it was best just to… well… put him to sleep. So my mum, who was really distressed, agreed. And we both ended up crying. And we stroking him when his heart finally stopped beating. It was horrible, but at the same time it was the best thing we could have done for him.

When we got home, my brother turned around and accused my mum of murdering the dog… which distressed her even more. She asked me if I thought we’d done the right thing. We had. We really had. According to the vet, there seemed to be something wrong with his liver too. Sadly, he was such a big dog that we couldn’t take him home to bury in the garden. Instead we agreed to have him cremated so we can scatter his ashes. I guess it sounds silly wanting to do that for him, but we loved him. He’d been a part of our family for eleven years and now the house seems empty without him. My mum has been rearranging furniture, which is her way of dealing with something that upsets her. Now we just have to wait until we get Ollie’s ashes back so we can put them somewhere nice. I think the cats are missing him.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I really didn’t want to blog about it much and I had nothing else to talk about really.

Other than that, I’ve been revising how to write a proper query letter thanks to reading the Query Shark’s blog. I think I’ve managed it. I damn well hope so. It’s been sent to an agent in the hopes that she decides to say yes. If she does, I’ll be ecstatic. Still, that is only the first step, I realise. After that there’s the fact that the agent needs to be able to get a publisher onside. Still, I’m hopeful. I’ve been getting quite a bit of positive feedback about the excerpts I put up on my site. I linked to them on my facebook recently and there are quite a few people who’ve sent me positive comments on them. If you’ve read the excerpt and you liked them or didn’t like them, as the case may be, please do comment below (you don’t have to log in to post a comment). I really like getting feedback. It helps me to know what I’ve done right and what might need improving.

My plan for the rest of the day is to make some dinner, editing and sending my CV etc for a job, edit Secrets & Ghosts a bit, possibly organise plans for book 4, and then to possibly write a piece of flash fiction to post tomorrow (this latter may or may not get done).

Also, thanks to those people who have given me their condolences over Ollie. I really appreciate it.

(Lyrics in the title are from Here We Go Again by Pixie Lott)