QUERYING AGAIN

While the small publisher who requested the full manuscript of The Race that Lies Before Us did not ask for an exclusive, I felt that God wanted me to stop querying agents and publishers for about 4 months Since that timeframe has passed I feel that God has released me from waiting, even though I have not heard back from the publisher.

I don't completely understand why God would have me spend so much time waiting when I could have been putting my book out there more places--giving me more opportunities for acceptance somewhere--but I do know that I haven't been wasting the time. God has led me to work on my blog and techniques to increase the hitcount, and increasing my contacts via Facebook and Twitter. Efforts in both of those areas have been successful. As a matter of fact, yesterday I received a request to be a guest blogger for a fellow writer! I'm so excited.

Anyway, maybe the reason God wanted me to wait was so I could focus on networking and platform-building instead of spending time querying. Whatever the reason, I will begin querying on The Race again, next week.

INTEREST FROM AN EDITOR

A few nights ago, I sent a query letter to the editor of a small publishing house. I was surprised and pleased to receive an e-mail only an hour later requesting the first chapter. It's so odd the way this all worked out. God truly does work in mysterious ways. One of my "friends" on Facebook (someone I don't know, but we're in the same suspense writers group on FB) sent a message announcing the creation of an FB group for a publishing house. I checked it out, then went to their website to find out more about them. When I saw that they didn't require an author to have an agent, I tweaked my query letter to personalize it and sent it off. And to think that four months ago I'd never heard of Facebook.