Is Cyberpunk in?

Common_Crow

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I've already sent out a handful of queries, got no response, so now I'm not only rewriting my query, but questioning how I want to describe the novel. It pretty much falls under speculative, blurring the lines with fantasy and sci-fi, but I only today realised I could describe it as cyberpunk given its setting. It is however on the longer end, and I believe only fantasy really gets a pass when it come to that. So what about it, would cyberpunk be a selling point or should I adjust what I say for each particular agent depending on their preferences?
 

ChaseJxyz

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There's lots of reasons you could be rejected. They might not like your writing style, the agent might already have a similar project in the works, they might only be looking for very specific types of YA books. It's also possible that your query is just not good. There's a board here that lets you post your query and people can critic it, have you considered that?
 

Common_Crow

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Yeah I've been thinking of submitting my query here, but I understand it takes 50 posts before you can do that. I've done a couple of new versions and I do think they're better.

Honestly it's not even been a month yet on some of the queries so I need to be more patient, I just know trends can have a big impact on what does and doesn't get picked up and it suck to think I spent so long writing something that might have gone out of vogue or is never going to be in vogue.

I was talking to my partner and he said what I wrote is more akin to steampunk, I just have so much neon in my book's setting I was kind of imagining it looking like Bladerunner.

Thanks for the reply.
 

onesecondglance

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Neon itself doesn't make cyberpunk - it's the contrast of that neon with grimy streets ("high tech and low life", as Bruce Sterling wrote). Without the smog and squalor, you get TRON instead of BLADE RUNNER.

I'd be very wary of using a genre descriptor in a query when you actually mean it as an aesthetic. Both pizza and pasta are Italian foods with tomato sauce, but you'd be pretty disappointed if you thought you'd ordered one and got the other.


Edited to add: one great way to get up to your 50 posts is to critique others' queries - you need 50 to post your own, but you can help others right away. And critiquing is brilliant practice to improve your own queries.
 
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Common_Crow

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Thanks for the feedback, it's also helped me reconsider more accurate comps.
 

Debbie V

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First, one month is nothing in the normal sphere of publishing. Second, business isn't normal right now. Working from home is slowing things down even more. And third, what's popular today has no bearing on what will be popular two or more years from now when your book will publish. Trends happen almost by accident. (Suddenly every publisher has a book on a similar theme, but all of them were purchased two years before and the agent may have had them for a time before that.) One of the toughest things about this industry for writers is the often total lack of feedback on whether you are headed in the right direction.

If you've had no feedback one way or the other on your materials, leave them be for a bit and write something else. In six months, revisit the work and the query and see if you want to continue making changes or just send out another set. And make sure your comps make sense and your description is accurate to your story. Getting those 50 posts so you can go through QLH will help. Good luck.
 

Common_Crow

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Thanks, Debbie. I am going to wait awhile. I understand it's not a good time to submit. I was just frustrated after being sick for nearly a year. If it hadn't been for that I would have been on submission before the pandemic. I'm still not fully recovered, so waiting would also give me time to be in a more solid place personally. But having done next to nothing for so long I'm itching to get going, probably not a good time to be doing something as complicated as submitting.
 

ChaseJxyz

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You can start working on your next project. I know how hard it is to hurry up and wait, but having something else to do can keep your mind off it. Even in ideal circumstances you'll still have to do a lot of waiting for query responses.
 
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