I Assure You, I'm Open

When I first opened up to queries years ago, I kept meticulous records in an excel spreadsheet of every query I received. The title, author, age category, genre, email address, date received, date responded, and type of response. I used to post query stats on my website. Number of queries received in a month, a breakdown of genre, percentage requested. And that definitely worked…until it no longer did.

Queries are easily the most unmanageable part of my job, and the part I feel relentless guilt and shame over, to the extent that I haven’t been open to queries in over a year, except by referral or request.

Querying sucks. It is painful and slow and opaque, made even worse by the fact that you’re throwing your heart’s work out into the void and you don’t know if anything will ever come of it except silence. On my side of the desk, the sheer number of queries that I got was astronomical, unfathomable. Thousands! If I spent all day doing nothing but reading queries I could never hope to catch up. And the hard truth is that I cannot spend all day reading queries. My time is prioritized for my clients and my colleagues, as it should be. I don’t have an assistant or an intern who can read slush for me. And so by 2023, I had become an agent that no longer responded to queries—something I vowed I would never, ever do.

Once upon a time I intended to be a novelist, myself. I majored in creative writing with a minor in English, published a few short stories, and moved to New York—not to work in publishing, but to write and hopefully get published. I was invited to read my work at a few notable literary salons, and I had the most impeccably polished first 50 pages of what I affectionally and obnoxiously referred to as my “literary slacker novel” which was about class war and sex in 1990s Boston loosely inspired by the Persephone myth, along with the outlines and ideas for two other novels waiting in the wings. I had a few agents ask me to query them after hearing me read excerpts of my WIP around New York. I never did.

I had one very big problem. I couldn’t fucking finish anything. I have never completed even the roughest draft of a single novel-length project, not once. When I got my first publishing internship, I realized very quickly that perhaps I was better suited to editing other people’s work than I was at actually completing my own. Ideas are a dime a dozen; execution is what counts.

I share this with you because when I tell you that I have a deep respect for every single query I receive, I want you to know it’s the truth. Every single person who queries me has—presumably—completed a novel. Whether or not their work is to my taste hardly matters. They’ve accomplished something I’ve never been able to do. They wrote to the end.

And I’ve been terrified to open back up to queries while I still had a backlog of hundreds sitting in query manager. I get plenty of referrals from clients and industry colleagues, so for a while I told myself I just wouldn’t ever have to open to queries properly again. But that broke my heart.

Reading slush is the first task I was given as an intern, back when queries still came in the mail with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. That rush of finding something amazing, that panicky thrill of getting to the end of the page and needing to read more just never gets old. It’s one of the things that made me fall in love with this job.

I will guilt myself into an early grave if I’m not careful (Cancer sun, Taurus moon, tons of Libra in the rest of my chart. I’m a delight), so I knew that before I opened up to queries again I needed to figure out how to do better. So I’m going to follow in the footsteps of other agents and open to queries for the first week of every month, and close for the remaining weeks thereafter. Theoretically this should limit the landslide of queries I get at once, and give me built in time to address them all, rather than just watching helplessly as the pile gets bigger and bigger.

I’ll announce this widely on Monday, but if you’re reading this right now on Friday, January 31st, I’ve already opened up on Query Manager.

Here’s a quick run down of what I’m looking for right now:

Adult: Fantasy, Romantasy, Science-fiction (including near-future), Dystopian, Urban fantasy, Paranormal fantasy, Cozy fantasy, Cozy anything, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, genre mash ups of all kinds, Rom-coms.

YA: Fantasy, Dystopian, Mystery/Suspense, Thriller or light horror elements, Contemporary if it has a super strong hook.

I’m not currently looking for Middle Grades or Picture Books.

Generally my taste leans more commercial and pacey, but I love, love, love books that are deeply weird and quirky and a little bit literary, too, so please do send those my way! Character development is always going to reign supreme for me; I need characters I care about (which doesn’t mean they have to be likeable, they just have to be worth investing in).

I love cinnamon roll boys, girls who dgaf, difficult choices with lasting repercussions, non-romantic relationships explored with depth (friends, siblings, parents). fresh magic systems, lived-in worlds, and books that hurt my feelings. I love found family, I love characters who can’t stand each other, I love people doing bad things for good reasons and people doing good things for bad reasons. If you can make me laugh and make me cry in the same story, you’ve got me.

Also, to be super, crystal clear: I love stories featuring marginalized characters, and stories created by marginalized people, and I want to see them in my inbox. Nonwestern mythologies and cultures. Queer and trans-inclusive stories. BIPOC stories. Disability stories.

I’ll update this more, soon, but consider this your headstart! I hope to see you in my inbox shortly!