THE NELSON AGENCY
Kristin Nelson is an agent I really would like to work with. I’ve linked to her agency, The Nelson Literary Agency, in case you want to check her out. What’s more, her blog rules. Every YA author should read it. Daily. I queried her about THE DISAPPEARED and she asked for the first 30 pages.
I then got a rejection.
That made me think, what’s going wrong in the first 30 pages of THE DISAPPEARED? What are other teen book succeeding at, in the very beginning of their texts, that I’m not?
I figured out it was three things: character development, character development, and character development.
So I went back to the text and made my heroine, Paige, much more accessible. Perhaps in a different post I’ll detail all the changes I spent hours upon hours on, but for right now I’ll get to the meat of this post:
I emailed Kristin again, told her about the changes, and asked her if she’d consider re-reading my first 30 pages.
Holy *gulp*, Batman.
I don’t know if it was a smart move or a stupid one, but it was at least a move. I think she’d be an ideal rep for this book and I had to try. But nowhere can I find information on re-querying agents about material. Maybe that’s because it’s a big faux pax and I’ve just committed the equivalent of YA-writer suicide. Or maybe it’s because a rejection seems so very final and writers are scared to try. Or smart to not try. For better or worse, I’m trying.
Stay tuned to hear the results.