Goalposts can move…

If there is a good reason.

During the past couple of weeks, I put a clean copy of Seeds of Power to the side and vowed not to open it again. I edited my query letter and my synopsis, but both need a little more work before I am ready to move forward.

I decided to say in my query letter that my New Adult Fantasy novel Seeds of Power and its sequel are available upon request. I also mention that I have an Adult Fantasy series Dreamcatcher. The main reason is to be honest about who I am and what work I have to offer an agent. Another reason to include this information is to show that I am not trying to sell a “first and only” novel—which would be fine to do and a huge accomplishment—but that I have finished writing multiple books.

That decision moved my goalposts. I had hoped to send my first query letter out before the end of the year. (Take that 2022!) While I am still hopeful I can meet that, I am ok delaying to make sure I am as ready as I can be. I’m giving the sequel Land of Monsters another quick read to make sure the document is clean in case someone requests it. I have some electronic notes from beta rounds and need to either do the suggested edit, or decide I’m not going to and delete the comment.

I want to do the same with Dreamcatcher and review my outline for the entire four-book series that I drafted. Those docs are full of comments from beta readers too, and the outline is potentially outdated after my last round of edits. I’d like to do another read-through of all four books in that series so its fresh and has clean copies, but… we’ll see if I begin to feel that’s overkill and decide to just send a query letter already! That work wouldn’t take too long and it would likely make me feel good about my body of work on hand. I might trade off timeline goals for in favor of a higher confidence level.

So the goalpost of sending my first query letter has likely moved, but it’s for a good reason. I want to present my best self to the world. I want to know that I did everything I could have done before opening myself up for rejection!

Fingers crossed I get all this done by the end of 2022 and can send a letter out Jan 2023.