WHAT TO DO AFTER REJECTION

{“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,

and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

- Oscar Wilde.}

I received this in my inbox this morning in reply to my query of Feb. 26th :

Dear Roland,

Thank you for your submission. Although I find that your novel has potential, it is not the type of story that I seek at this time. I wish you the best of luck, and hope to hear great things from you in the future.

Best regards,

Marisa

Not the worst form rejection I've ever received. So what to do?

Get back on that horse.

Research who wants urban fantasy. I did and found a freelance editor who is getting into the agent side of things.

And she handles, among other things, urban fantasy. Go here to see if she handles your genre :

http://caseylmccormick.blogspot.com/2010/09/agent-spotlight-cari-foulk.html

And here is my sparkling, revised query : (No applause please -- just throw money.)

Dear Ms. Foulk :

Long before Man. Long before Light. Darkness reigned.

Light pierces its flesh. It hates the light. It hates even more Man who casts light like a garment over this world.

A man with the blood of Death in his veins. A revenant priest. Both thought their lives couldn't get any worse. Hurricane Katrina proved them wrong.

FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE is the 90,000 word urban fantasy detailing their struggles to keep the survivors alive and the Darkness at bay in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Here are the first few paragraphs :

It rained lies and death today.

I stood knee-deep in water outside my French Quarter jazz club, Meilori’s. My soul stretched tight across my chest. Everything I saw and heard in the shadows spoke to me ... in threats.

The sudden, short explosion of an unseen gun. A quick, sharp scream in the distance. And the blue spurt of a lighted match at the far end of the street. My city bled slowly in the ripples of the flooded streets.

I leaned back against the door to my club as if for reassurance that something solid still remained to me. That it survived Katrina was a mixed blessing. It was all that was left to me of my wife.

Staying here was both penance and purgatory. Meilori’s was the kind of place in which almost anything was likely to happen and in which almost everything had.

Inside, fifty-one survivors of Katrina were huddled in shivering, too quiet clusters. Words have no meaning when a city dies. Nothing much does.

Somewhere distant in the hot, red darkness a shot rang out. Another called out to it like a wolf. But it came from a different direction. I smiled bitterly. The predators had crawled out from their boarded shelters. They knew the restraint of law had died this day. Soon they would come for me.

You see, I had enemies in the night. And not all of them were human.

***

To get a better idea of my writing voice, you may want to visit my blog, WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/


I am a former high school teacher, family counselor, and now a blood courier. The last a result of being evacuated from Lake Charles due to Hurricane Rita and having to support myself any way I could.

I found I liked the job and the people with whom I worked. And it gives me more time to write. Thank you for reading my query.

Two other agents are considering the first 50 pages of my novel. I would be happy to send you further sample chapters or the full manuscript May the rest of this year hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A.
rxena77@yahoo.com

I wish all of us luck in finding success in our publication dreams, Roland
And here's wishing us all a day without rain :