Thank you for doing this! In general, do you think it best to avoid querying near the end of the year (Thanksgiving until the New Year)? I've heard "query when they're open" and "it'll feel stale when they look if it came in before January." Probably all agents vary--what's your take?

😁 Yes, though I don't follow college football. I'm not from around here (even after 30 years in Huntsville--called "The Rocket City" since the 1950s, just so you know). 1st 2 questions when you meet someone here: who do you go for (Auburn or Bama of Roll Tide fame) and what church do you attend?

I'm a member and I have gotten so much useful help from my membership! I don't see the Publishing Help Desk on the calendar at present, but I have an un-Google-able question. When would it be calendared, or should I reach out more directly to y'all? (says the gal currently living in Alabama)

Hi, Rebecca! I sent a query before you updated the form and I didn't highlight a marginalized status. It's in my QT bio but not the letter. Will that be clear enough or would you prefer I withdraw the query and resend with a clearer status? Thx!

Done

I have had that happen so often with Katie Britt (R-AL). I write to say "Don't do this awful thing!" and she writes back "I was proud to sponsor the bill to do this awful thing!" 😡

Let me indulge myself in a moment of fangirling: Jeni, I Iove the resources you have provided. If you saw filler/filter words in my submission, it's not because I didn't consider them!

That said:
Do you have recommendations for a 2 MC structure or beat sheet? Thx!

That comp-finder is incredible! I just wandered through it and I cannot thank you enough for the effort you've put into that. Just...wow.

On the 52K versus 50K words, I'd always heard we should round to the nearest thousand, not lop off a couple thousand at a time. So I really could say 95K not 97K? or 115 not 117K? That would be ... great!

Totally. I have done enough "therapeutic parenting" to want other people to benefit from my sh#tty experiences. In any context, hard-won experience needs shared!

Yes. But the agent felt like the POV of that not-needed-in-query character was too surprising not to mention that character in the query.

Q on the character mention: I had an agent say that a POV character should be in the query letter so she wasn't startled when the character showed up later. (Multiple POV MS). Would that be an exception to this general rule, in your opinion?

Well, let's just say I don't want you to break the rules. But I have my suspicions. 😘

Thanks! I would have thought fantasy, but your adult fantasy on QueryTracker only lists "cosy fantasy." Are you assuming Romantasy falls into that camp? I see a lot of different perceptions of what romantasy might be, so I'd appreciate your definition! :-)

Natascha, you just posted an interest in romantasy, but your QueryTracker form doesn't have a place for that except as Adult: Romance or YA: Romance. Could you expand on what exactly you are looking for or if that's where you'd want to see romantasy categorized?

Firing 400 people at FAA can't have helped. That's so Musk can say air travel isn't safe and his Starlink system will make it safe again, resulting in yet another gov't contract/sweetheart deal. It's very frustrating to see it all going down (as it were)

Hey, I love the idea of agents letting querying authors know they're in a maybe pile--it would be stressful, of course (as getting one's hopes up always is!), but it might confirm that the query, pages, synopsis are doing their job enough to stop all the second guessing/revising. Thx for this!