HELP!!!!!

Madisonwrites said:

But I have two complete MG novels and agents and editors are almost screaming for stories written for that age group.

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Have you ever sent those out?

Query with the best manuscript first. If you think one of the MG ones is a better book (or will be when you're done revising) then revise that and query that.

DO NOT rush to query a book that is in a hot genre/market right now but isn't quite finished. You're just shooting yourself in the foot. Agents will still be looking for great MG books a year from now, don't worry. You have time to revise and polish whatever book is your best one.

And for all you know, your YA book is appropriate for MG and they'll decide to market it that way. That happened to me. I got an agent for a YA, she submitted is as YA, the editor who bought it felt it was more MG and that's how we're marketing it. Fantasy has a lot of leeway between MG and YA.

Query your best work, period.

If the MGs were just finished chances are it will be at least a month or two before they're ready to be queried; I try and sit on my projects without even looking at them for at least a month if possible before starting edits, because that way your mind is fresh and you'll catch things you wouldn't have had you started editing immediately.

Why not query all three at the same time? Not in one letter, and give a break between each at each agency, and see which one lands first? With Query Tracker it's easy to keep this all straight.

Basically this was my approach with THE NEXT STEP and THE PICTURE. I had both of them out to different agents waiting to see what hooked an agent first. Some of the same agents were queried, but after a month or more, I doubt that my name registered with them.

This is, of course, assuming that all of this is polished to within an inch of its life. In my case, THE PICTURE got finished about 3 months after I started with THE NEXT STEP.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Madisonwrites said:

So, anyone here think I should query more than one story (and not in one letter, as jclarkdawe pointed out)?

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not to the same agency at the same time, but yes. of course. why couldn't you?

No reason why you can't, as long as you spread them around. The only potential trouble could come if two agents want to rep two different novels. Then you'd have to pick