I have been busy trying to be a novelist. I’m starting to think it is one of the worst choices I have ever made. My writing may be improving. I sent queries to several agents and one publisher. I got an email from an editor at the publishing house. She wanted to know why I chose to write my specific female characters. I answered and asked if she was interested in my book. She said she wasn’t. She also said that if I wrote in the voice of a male character, my manuscript would be more marketable. I then asked why she wanted to know about my choices of female characters. She ghosted me. This communication was based on a query letter and the first ten pages of the manuscript.
I sent a similar query to an agent who replied that he didn’t like novels that spoke directly to the reader. Since mine did, he passed on representing me. These replies came within hours of my sending the queries. My experience with querying agents has been from letter rejections received a month or more after I queried.
Those earlier attempts were sent based on Google searches for literary agents. I’ve gotten smarter this time. I use Publishers Marketplace to find deals for books similar to mine and query the agents that sold them. It’s a short list but much more likely to produce results.
My current manuscript is the woman Who Died Twice (my working title). It’s written in the first person POV. I’m much happier writing this way. I thought a lot about the editor’s (Sara J. Henry) advice to scrap this story and write from a male’s perspective. This isn’t advice to take lightly. Maybe the fiction market is oversaturated with female protagonists.
My decision to write from the point of view of a woman struggling to start a new career as an investigator was driven by my love of this genre of mystery books. Given how much time I’ve spent writing this manuscript, I think I will keep trying to market it. I know I’m prejudiced, but I have to say that I like the story a lot. I don’t always love what I write. I hope Sara is wrong this time.