After much elation and trepidation following the request for a "full from a partial" by Barbara Poelle of Irene Goodman, I have been rejected. This is more of a blow to me than I thought. It seems that if someone who was so interested and wanted to like it, didn't like it, then who will? She sent a very nice email and this is an excerpt:
"I found myself involved in the storyline immediately- I really wanted to love this one! Unfortunately, despite my initial interest, I am going to pass on representing the work. Although the plot was intriguing, I couldn’t get the overall narrative style to resonate with me as strongly as I would have liked and I began to feel as if there wasn’t enough uniqueness within the storyline to sustain the work as a true commercial competitor. In an already crowded genre, material must have a unique premise and a strong execution in order to become a stand-out, and this one just didn’t leap out at me as much as I had hoped."
She said the usual encouraging stuff about it being subjective and someone else may love it, etc., but I really am dejected. I thought it actually was such a unique premise! A murder of an abortion clinic employee during the setting of a fire, by someone you'd never suspect for an unusual, but plausible, reason. But I must not have the voice to tell it.
I could really use some support and maybe some light at the end of the tunnel experiences from anyone else who has gone on to publication success.
Or if you think I should be looking at the writing on the wall, then tell me that too. I have worked on this darn thing for years now and I really believe in it, but will anyone else? This is my second request for a full, but the first in the round of latest queries, when I felt the MS was at an appropriate stage. The other was Uwe Stender, 2 years ago when it wasn't as polished and edited as it is now.
"I found myself involved in the storyline immediately- I really wanted to love this one! Unfortunately, despite my initial interest, I am going to pass on representing the work. Although the plot was intriguing, I couldn’t get the overall narrative style to resonate with me as strongly as I would have liked and I began to feel as if there wasn’t enough uniqueness within the storyline to sustain the work as a true commercial competitor. In an already crowded genre, material must have a unique premise and a strong execution in order to become a stand-out, and this one just didn’t leap out at me as much as I had hoped."
She said the usual encouraging stuff about it being subjective and someone else may love it, etc., but I really am dejected. I thought it actually was such a unique premise! A murder of an abortion clinic employee during the setting of a fire, by someone you'd never suspect for an unusual, but plausible, reason. But I must not have the voice to tell it.
I could really use some support and maybe some light at the end of the tunnel experiences from anyone else who has gone on to publication success.
Or if you think I should be looking at the writing on the wall, then tell me that too. I have worked on this darn thing for years now and I really believe in it, but will anyone else? This is my second request for a full, but the first in the round of latest queries, when I felt the MS was at an appropriate stage. The other was Uwe Stender, 2 years ago when it wasn't as polished and edited as it is now.
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You put your query through Query Letter Hell here onthe SYW boards, yes? You targeted agents through AgentQuery or a similar winnowing process, yes? How many queries are still out? How many requests for partials did you receive?
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