Writer Status Update

Novel Status

Three rejections from agents thus far—one positive, one negative, the last a no response within the time frame set by the agency’s website, which means they’re not interested. I send out more as the no’s come in. For the next batch, I’ll try tweaking my query letter, though it’s hard to know where with no specific feedback. The currently popular refusal goes: (paraphrased) this work isn’t what we’re looking for but another agency may feel different. Good luck.

Sounds nice as rejections go, just isn’t useful. Of course you can’t expect agents to critique every query and the few pages of your novel asked for as an example. I’m grateful to receive a response. At least I know they looked at it.

Update on Post About Big Rigs

News headlines are full of the Walmart truck that plowed into the limo van, killing one and critically wounding another. The driver may have been on the road twenty-four hours without sleep. As I wrote in http://bonniearnot.blogspot.com/2014/05/sharing-road-with-big-rigs.html, my brother drives such a truck. He has an electronic log that keeps track of the time the truck is in operation. If he goes over the federally mandated time allowance (including rest periods every so many hours), the truck literally shuts down.

All the trucks in the company my brother drives for are so equipped. Why aren’t Walmart’s trucks? Of course ultimately responsible for his own decisions, did the driver feel coerced to make a delivery deadline? It can mean a driver’s job, not that a job compares to a person’s life, though it can feel that way to the person whose livelihood is threatened. I’d like to see the repercussions of this fall on all deserving parties.

What I’m Reading

Finished the 700+ page The Gold Finch by Donna Tartt. I think it’s an example of the genre called literary fiction. Not my cup of tea. A lot of description that did sing across the page but the clever word play seemed to be there for its own sake rather than the sake of the story.

Friday in The Point of the Gospel—the first disciples.