Hope Springs From An Unexpected Literary Source

Today I’m celebrating my ten-month anniversary of arriving in New Mexico; last week’s spring equinox; and the blooming of daffodils planted with much hope and anticipation in late October (depicted in the accompanying photo). As I’ve walked my dog in early morning springtime, cottontails have joined us while quail coveys skitter across rural roads and smaller birds flit about with twigs in their mouths, intent on nest-building.

Spring is indeed a time of new beginnings and life sprouting around every corner, which is why it was a delightful surprise to derive hope from an unexpected source after reading an online Writer’s Digest article. Which, in days gone by, I might previously have eschewed for the first two words in its title alone: “Query Math: An Agent’s Take on Tackling Queries,” by Victoria Marini.

Not fond of numbers nor familiar with the article’s author, I admit it nonetheless aroused my curiosity, though readers of this blog might know that in past years I have also eschewed—and lamented—the trials and tribulations of the traditional publishing route including the querying of literary agents, a necessary process in order to pursue it.

Having decided that the wait, which can be years, and the literary hope-diminishing aspects were not for me and my Other Worldly series —many agents never even respond to reject your work—last summer I began to consider newly sprung options. Like publishing house One More Chapter in the UK, which seeks authors not represented by literary agents, to relaunch the series beginning with a revised Alienable Rights, initially published in February 2020.

After receiving a One More Chapter rejection in late January, I began to consider, as recently addressed in this blog, a reversal of mindset and of book order. Pondering that perhaps I might be open to querying a literary agent in the future about the entire OW series, but focusing instead on my eighth and final OW novel in progress, Alien Origins.  Which is probably why I was willing to read an article with the word query in the title despite my math and traditional publishing reticence.

It turned out to have sage advice, and to plant seeds of hope now blossoming within in me. Here’s what Victoria Marina, a literary agent and an author, had to say on the subject. “The math of querying comes down to time.” Not an author’s time, but the daunting reality that literary agents—with demands on their workday including far more than seeking new authors to represent through a slew of electronic queries received monthly—have approximately 180 seconds to read a query. Making the “hook” all that much more critical.

The hook being a concise, attention-grabbing description of a novel’s core premise, designed to spring interest within seconds. There’s been scads written about that, but Marini’s article featuring math somehow appealed to me in a way that others have not. “Make them feel something,” she advised on hooking literary agents. “Afraid, curious, righteously angry. Make us chuckle, put a pit in our stomach, or immediately connect us to a character in just a few words.” To do that, Marini said, “Come back to why you write. It’s the same reason we read. To feel. To connect. It’s the hope of the next great story.”

Boy howdy is that in keeping with my refrain about novels needing to connect, not just to entertain. I may not have begun writing my speculative fantasy series in order to make a reader laugh or even arouse righteous anger, but all along as I’ve kept right on drafting through seven books and counting, I have strived for a protagonist in feisty feminist Rowan Layne that women—especially those over fifty—might connect with.

Using numerical insight with respect to constraints on literary agents reading queries, Marini said, “Give us a reason to be reckless with our time. Because if it’s a numbers game at all, in the end it’s one meant for gamblers—those who roll the dice with time when they’re not sure if the bet will pay off. And your job is to keep us at the table.”

While I left the quintessential world of casino gambling behind in Las Vegas, NV, and was never much of a financial gambler in the first place, I went out on a gambling limb by writing a pointedly sociopolitical, surprisingly comedic series that crosses multiple genres and features a post-middle-aged female with a not-so-traditional outlook on life—or on aliens of the extraterrestrial kind.

Hence, I now must turn my sights on persuading literary agents to gamble on me and my literary character Rowan Layne. And in learning of Victoria Marini through this article, I can’t help but feel like I’ve stumbled upon a jackpot of sorts. Because this woman, a former literary agent for the Irene Goodman Agency among others, started her own agency in 2023, High Line Literary Collective.

High Line’s website says it is “redefining what a literary agency can be…standing at the intersection of art and commerce.” Even better, this agency via Victoria Marina seeks “whimsical speculative romantasy” with a “quirk,” as in a “twist of magic” or a “dash of humor.”

And while High Line is not currently open for submissions, I’m also not presently ready to submit Alien Origins, having only almost reached the halfway point last week in drafting it. But what better incentive to continue springing forward than the possibility of an agent worth querying once I’m ready to gamble on that challenging process once again? Because timing really is everything, and I suppose math does matter (at least maybe sometimes).

If daffodil bulbs I hastily planted in late autumn, without precisely measuring the depth to dig in difficult soil, can sprout in the hardscrabble, high-altitude desert in late winter  just in time to bloom in early spring, I suppose I can shove the past dirt of rejection aside and eventually take another risk in striving to breath new literary life into my Other Worldly series.