welcome to debut year! everything is fine.
helloooooo! due to the continued fuckery that is Musk Melon's Twitter takeover, I migrated my newsletter from Revue (which has now shut down) to Substack, which is a more popular and so far friendlier newsletter platform anyway. if you're new around these parts, welcome! if you were subscribed to my old newsletter and got migrated here (thank you, Substack, for letting me import all my old issues and data), welcome back! if you’re new around these parts, welcome!
unsurprisingly, since (a) it is now Debut Year (!!!) and (b) I took December off from newsletter-writing and once again decided to post my newsletter toward the end of the month instead of the beginning...there's a lot of book news. so let's dive in!
guess who now has rep? *finger guns* it's me, ya girl
that's right! I have an agent now! after twenty years of writing, two (query-ready) books, and two and a half years in the trenches, I'm now represented by Keir Alekseii of Azantian Literary.
Keir signed me for the contemporary fantasy I revised as part of Author Mentor Match, Round 9 (thanks, CJ <3), The Many Buried Things of Peter Shaughnessy. it's about an old man cursed with immortality, who hunts ghosts rather than making living friends who will die one day, but whoops his hand slips and now he cares. it's gay and ghosty and chock full of found family, and I am so proud of it I could cry.
not that I never get impostor syndrome about this manuscript, because it's impossible to revise anything ever without feeling like I've completely forgotten how to write, but. lowkey there is no impostor syndrome here, and highkey there is no false modesty here, ever. I set out to write a book about grief and love and letting people in and moving on. and when I first started drafting it in may 2020, I wasn't sure I could pull it off.
but! this book does exactly what I want it to do. as much as I love my debut, Buried Things is on a whole new level—in terms of craft, in terms of theme, in terms of what it accomplishes, everything, and I think it's more indicative of my author brand going forward. I literally just *anime fist clench* love this manuscript so much.
anyway, no "how I got my agent" story here, because no one wants to read a newsletter that long. (if you want to read a long, semi-“how I got my agent”-but-not-exactly post, it’s on my blog.) but here are some quick stats, for all you numbers people out there and/or those of you who need to know that you are not a hopeless failure if you don't get agented in three months.
(more on that in the blog post.)
overall stats
20 years writing
2 books queried
2 1/2 years in the trenches
137 queries sent
1 R&R
22 fulls
6 partials
(20% request rate)
stats for buried things
2 years writing
6 months in the trenches
63 queries sent
1 R&R
8 fulls
2 partials
(15% request rate)
you probably noticed I didn't include my offer or rejection stats, and that's because they're slightly complicated because of how I went about things after the call with Keir: I withdrew any outstanding pages two days later. while I know it's the usual practice to nudge other agents with an offer—while I did that when Hansen House offered on Remarkable Retirement (the only offer on that book) and always planned to do so should an offer materialize for Buried Things—after our call, a chat with some of their other clients, and thinking about my own wants and needs, I decided it would be disingenuous to nudge other agents when I knew I wanted to sign with Keir.
remarkable retirement updates
release day is just three months away! you'd think I'd be stressed out at this point, but I'm actually taking a much-needed break until probably mid-February. back in December, my sister posted about the book on Tumblr, and Tumblr ran with it. thanks to all the folks on Tumblr who are so excited about Remarkable Retirement, and with my edits done, I've been able to take a breather since about Christmas while watching numbers steadily rise anyway.
currently, Edna's at about 3,000 GoodReads adds. she's also appeared on a few "most anticipated" lists and was recommended on a podcast. the StoryGraph e-ARC giveaway had almost 3,000 entries. the e-book is popping up for preorder in bookstores all over, including bookstores in Italy, Belgium, and Japan. overall preorders are up. and thanks to the interest, we're even starting to look into maybe, possibly, if we can drum up the funds for it, doing an audiobook.
basically, right now, I'm just sitting back and enjoying things. which is a pretty nice place to be, three months before release date.
odds & ends
recent reads
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (adult contemporary fantasy, new comfort read)
The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim (YA romance, recent release but long-time TBR)
recent watches
A Man Called Otto (based on the book by Fredrik Backman, a strong comp for Buried Things, with scenes filmed at my local train station)
Only Murders in the Building (Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, fourth rewatch, comfort show even though murder)
recent listens
lots of Ursine Vulpine and Annaca, SVRCINA, and Ruella thanks to YouTube Music's automixes for me, which is the only way I ever discover new music bc I'm still just out here listening to the same 10 CDs I listened to in high school
recent birds
it's early in the year, so my bird list so far is made up of typical backyard birds that are here year-round: house sparrows, nuthatches, a few of the more common woodpeckers, cardinals, crows, robins, starlings, juncos, red-tailed hawks, doves, and mallards. but also a house finch, which I don't see as often! I also saw a kestrel on my drive to work last week, and I saw it hunting, which was BALLER
a male house finch. © Rick from Alabama on Flickr
other random doodads
[bill nye voice] did you know that...working out doesn't suck if you listen to your own music at the gym??? well, yes, obviously you did, because everyone did. except me, a person who did not own a smart phone until 2017 and did not own ear buds until last year. anyway recently I realized working out can actually be not-awful if you're listening to your own music. amazing.
until next time!
