"You wrote a book? Really?" (Part 4)

...Two weeks later, I still had no response to my e-mail, nor did I have a response to my letter. At this point, with the online battle scars still fresh and work becoming even more annoying than before, I was on the hunt for blood.

Sitting down at my work computer early Thursday morning, I typed out a blistering one page fax. Basically it came to the erroneous conclusion that because I felt that since I was being ignored (mistake #6) that must of meant that they didn't want anything to do with me anymore. So I politely told them to stop making solicitations on my behalf, and that I was giving them my notice as per our contractual agreement.

When I got home later that evening, I had a response to my letter from my now ex-agent. In it, they answered my questions (unsatisfactorily in my eyes) and apologized for the lateness of the letter as they were out of the office for the past few weeks meeting with publishers and producers. When I checked my e-mail, I had a swift and terse response to my e-mail (no surprise there). They reiterated that they were out of the office for the past two weeks and had just gotten around to answering their correspondence. Additionally, they said they never received my e-mail of October 12th and if they did, they would have responded. They also said that they were disappointed that I wouldn't see this through to the end and wished my luck with my future endeavors. They also said that they would mail me back my manuscript, posthaste.

There wasn't much I could say after that. Basically, I looked a gift horse in the mouth and said, "I think I'll pass on this one."

So while waiting for them to ship my manuscript back to me, I began firing off queries to other agents, hoping to land one and continue my quest to find a publisher. While one of my strong points is telling a good story, one of my weakest points is writing a good query letter. And let me tell you, my query letters really bit the big one. I got super quick rejections from agents who were lazy enough to simply use my query letter and jot a half dozen words down it, basically saying, "No thanks, get lost".

But I'm getting ahead of myself with the rejections. About a week later, I got my manuscript back. Not the version that they redid and submitted to publishers (of which I fortunately have a copy of), but the original, complete with enough red ink on it to refill another pen. Also the package was very damaged, almost like they were seriously angry at me for questioning their ability. Really?

So putting aside for the time being, that original manuscript and the goal of getting published, I spent the next two months editing a short story for a couple of writing contests (which I haven't heard anything on since I sent the stories to them back in December 2007).

By Spring 2008, I was ready to start sending out query letters to agents again. But first, I had to do something with the revised manuscript that I had packed away in storage, gathering dust...