1) How long have you been writing? What are your
favorite genres to write in?
I’ve been writing five or six years. Time has a
tendency to slip away so I wouldn’t be surprised if that number was higher. My
writing tends to involve magic or the fantastic of some kind which puts me
squarely in the fantasy genre. I like to branch out with age categories. My
books span the gamut with adult, YA, and now middle grade.
2) What are your favorite genres to read? Which books
have had the greatest impact on you?
But I’m also a fan of biographies and non-fiction
about history, especially the American Revolution and 16th century
English royalty. While I guess you could say classics made up the backbone of
my reading. I started with Jane Austin, Alexander Dumas, and the Bronte sisters
and moved toward fantasy as I got into my late teens. Gone with the Wind and
The Wheel of Time series all had an influence on my writing as I loved the
involved and detailed characters of those worlds.
3) Aside from writing, what do you love to do?
Aside from writing and reading, I guess I’m a couch
potato. I enjoy watching movies and TV at night with my husband. I’m a big
sports fan for my local teams. Go Bears and Irish! I absolutely love football
and baseball. And I like to make my yard colorful with all kinds of annuals and
perennials, though I’m not so keen on the yard work. I might be a tiny bit
addicted to twitter and running query contests. I’m a co-host of Query Kombat
and Nightmare on Query Street
4) May we see your agent-winning query letter?
This is the actual query that went to my agent, along
with the personalized chit-chat I put at the beginning. Sarah used quite a bit
of this query in the pitch letter she crafted. I’m kind of proud of that.
Thanks so much for volunteering to join my Agent Greeting
contest. I’m looking forward to it on August 5th. I saw on Writer’s Digest that
you were looking for middle grade and decided to send you my query in hopes you
will find it interesting.
Tom, the classroom hamster, wants to escape from the
h-e-double-hockey-sticks otherwise known as school. His military training
at the pet shop didn’t include playing house or being sentenced to a
boot camp of never-ending Show ‘n Tell, math facts rap, and story
time. But he’s learned a lot behind the bars of his cage. For
example, if you want to keep breathing, never trust a pygmy who has earned
the nickname Squeezer. Somehow he has to get away before the pygmies dress
him as Strawberry Shortcake again—or worse.
When a “subspatoot” teacher fills in, Tom sees his chance
to put Operation Escape the Pygmies into action. He makes a run for the border,
hamster style. Bad news. The principal says a rodent on the loose is a distraction
to learning and better off flushed. The way out is turned into a battlefield of
snapping mousetraps, sticky snares, and poisoned pellets.
Tom seems doomed until the friendless Squeezer
lends an over-excited hand. She quickly goes from supervillain to
super sidekick. Now, the greatest obstacle to his freedom may be Tom’s soft
spot for this lonely pygmy.
A cross between Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and those cute
AT&T kid commercials, PYGMY HAZARDS is a MG fantasy complete at 34,000
words. My epic fantasy, Kindar’s Cure, was recently
released by Divertir Publishing. My short story, Frost and Fog, was
published by The Elephant’s Bookshelf for their summer anthology, Summer’s
Double Edge. I’ve worked at an elementary school as a special needs assistant
for over ten years, giving me lots of experience with pygmies.
Thanks for your consideration.
5) How long did you query before finding your agent?
With Pygmy Hazards I entered a contest in April and
started to query soon after. That would make it roughly five months before I
got an offer. I will say that I got tons of rejections in that time period.
Probably more than forty, though a good number were personalized about how cute
the idea was and my very first query got a request. I got a whole lot of ‘just
not for me.’ It wasn’t an overnight success by any means.
And Pygmy Hazards was my fourth manuscript to be
queried. I was actually still querying for my YA dystopian, Dodge the Sun, when
I started to query with my hamsters. And when my offer came, I had two partials
out for Dodge that I had to notify. My journey to get an agent was a long and
painful one.
My first manuscript was an epic fantasy which got
three requests and over a hundred rejections. That’s about the time I began to
get on the internet more and discovered critique groups. I soon found my
manuscript was full of fatal flaws, not to mention a word count of double the
usual length. The rejections were painful, but understandable given the
writing.
My second manuscript was also an epic fantasy, but this
time I did everything right. It was extensively beta read. All the writing
flaws of my last manuscript had vanished. I got a grand total of THREE requests
yet again. I was actually certain I was cursed. Cursed by the number three. Ask
my CPs, they’ll vouch for that. Each rejection was like another stamp on my
heart. When it queried out, I decided my manuscript was worth the effort and
ended up getting an offer from a small press to publish. Validation! Kindar’s
Cure came out in July 2013.
My third manuscript was a goldmine. I’d seen the trend
in YA and lowered my main character’s age to go for the YA market. I still told
my story, but I adjusted it a little for a new age category. Dodge the Sun got
nearly twenty requests and most of them were fulls. I also set this story in
the ‘real’ world. Agents jumped right over partials and asked to see the whole
thing. But that’s when the market let me down.
Dystopian was a dead end. It was so crowded, that no
publishers wanted it anymore. Full after full came back with ‘just didn’t
connect.’ My last two fulls came back as rejections of, you guessed it, ‘just
didn’t connect’ on THE SAME FREAKING DAY! It wasn’t that the agents found
anything wrong with the story or the characters, they just couldn’t sell it. It
was a heartbreaker for me. I used to stare at myself in the mirror while
getting ready for bed and try not to cry it hurt that much. I wanted the big
time tradition deal for this story so I put Dodge on the shelf, hoping the
market would change.
While I waited on some late partial for Dodge, I had
an ace in the hole. A little middle grade I’d finished that was nothing like
any of my other books. The main characters are animals. There’s no magic,
unless you count talking hamsters as magic. It is set in an everyday world
inside a school. And it’s humorous! The whole story started as part of a short
story contest started by Joyce for something with a talking animal. It was
never meant to be a serious contender. I started querying without high hopes.
The daily grind of querying has a way of squashing confidence and inflicting
pain that makes me defensive about keep my expectations low.
6) What can you tell us about your new agent and the
process of signing on with her?
I sent a lot of my queries for Pygmy Hazards to new
agents with the expectation that new agents were more interested in building
their client lists. Sarah Negovetich was one of those new agents. She’d spent
some time as an intern, learning the ropes, and was now accepting her own
clients. She’d actually reached out to me first. I was having a small query
critique contest where people could win critiques from agents and Sarah wanted
to be a part of it. Shortly after, I sent her a query for my middle grade.
But the first offer I received came from another agent
toward the end of August. Agent A had requested Pygmy Hazards from that very
first contest I entered back in April. As you see, it took many months for her
to get around to offering. After about a week of trying to find a time, we had
the call on a Friday and talked for two hours. It was a great conversation, but
I told her I needed to notify other agents and think her offer over. I just
wasn’t sure because she didn’t rep fantasy and most of my writing involved
fantasy.
I put out a nudge to all the agents with my material
and any outstanding queries that were less than a month old. Things started
moving very fast. I woke up Saturday morning to a request from Sarah to see the
full. Another agent asked for a partial. Those with my material promised to get
back to me within the week. Several polite congratulations but passes came
through my inbox. I was honestly so busy deciding what to do and checking my
inbox that I didn’t have time to celebrate. It didn’t really seem real.
I believe by Monday afternoon Sarah wanted to talk. I
had a second Call with her on Tuesday. Her call actually caught me out on a
walk with my husband and dogs. Let me tell you, we high tailed it home at
double speed! We meshed well, and Sarah preferred speculative fiction! She had
an answer for all my questions and they were very honest. She was a hands-on
editor for her clients, and I loved that about her. I thought her ideas about
an agent helping with their client’s marketing were a new and needed
diversification for agents.
My deadline passed, and I decided to go with Sarah. It
was a perfect decision for me. We get along great and have the same ideas for
Pygmy Hazards. She really keeps me informed on how the submission process is
going.
I don’t think the whole process really hit me until
about two weeks later. Sometimes I lay there in the middle of the night and get
a little shiver that I have an agent after so long.
7) What advice would you give to those who are
actively querying or getting ready to query?
It’s pretty cliché because everyone gives this same
advice, but I’d say write another story while you query. That way you have
something new ready to go if the querying doesn’t work out. Also do some
networking and try to let agents get your name in their radar. Plus most
importantly, don’t give up.
8) What have you learned from querying and writing
that you didn't know before?
Writing pushed me to come out of my shell. I was
always a very shy person and this process has given me a new confidence. Not
only do I start up conversations with writer’s I don’t know, I’m not afraid to
approach agents for invites to contests or interviews.
9) How important were your beta readers/critique
partners?
My critique partners were so important and not just
for finding flaws in my manuscripts. CP’s are the ones you can turn too when
you’re cursed on three requests and can never, never get any higher. They are
the ones who understand what you’re going through. They are the people you
forward your requests to and the ones who talk you off the ledge when you’re
ready to quit. I do believe the q-word came up for me a few months ago.
10) What are you most excited about regarding the
whole being agented experience?
Why now I can run more contests! Wait, no. That’s not
it.
I’ve always been a curious person. I want to see
behind everything to how the process works. Now I get to see behind the agent
curtain to what happens during submission. So far it’s a lot like querying as
far as the waiting—only now I have a filter. Sarah is between me and those
rejection letters! It’s so wonderful to have a cheerleader in my corner!
Thank you, Michelle, for sharing your story and your wisdom with us. I know personally, I'm looking forward to reading all of Pygmy Hazards with my kids.
Michelle
Hauck lives in the bustling metropolis of northern Indiana
She is a co-host of the yearly contest Query Kombat. Her epic fantasy, Kindar's Cure, was published by Divertir Publishing. Her short story, Frost and Fog, was published by The Elephant's Bookshelf Press in their anthology, Summer's Double Edge. She’s represented by Sarah Negovetich of Corvisiero Literary.
She is a co-host of the yearly contest Query Kombat. Her epic fantasy, Kindar's Cure, was published by Divertir Publishing. Her short story, Frost and Fog, was published by The Elephant's Bookshelf Press in their anthology, Summer's Double Edge. She’s represented by Sarah Negovetich of Corvisiero Literary.
Facebook: Michelle Hauck, Author
Kindar’s
Cure on Amazon Ebook
Kindar’s
Cure at The Book Depository
I can only cheer! YAY! I know it was a long hard road, but you made it :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for inviting me, Joyce! And thanks for the cheer, TJ!
ReplyDelete