Instead of my usual single long post today, you’ll have to make do with 3 small posts, for reasons I shall explain.

I recall that when I was a kid on the farm, when my dad wanted a cow to move and it wouldn’t move, he’d take hold of its tail and twist hard.

No doubt this will shock some animal lovers, but it accomplished its purpose, and I never saw a cow actually injured.

I thought about that kind of tail-twisting as I twisted my own tail last night, forcing myself to actually get out of passive mode, select one (just one) of the agents whose information I’d downloaded the other night, and send an e-mail query to her.

(This is how it’s done most of the time, for you aspiring authors out there. You find a list of agents, you select a few you think might be interested in you [someone suggested sending out 12 at a time, so I selected 12), and then you follow their individual directions for queries. This is not one-size-fits-all. Each agent has a way he/she likes to be approached. Approach them that way. No sense teaching them to hate you even before they know you.)

So I sent a single query last night, and to my amazement I had a reply this morning. (I’m accustomed to being ignored by agents, even my own.) She wants to see a sample chapter and a synopsis. So that’s how I’ll spend my evening. Fortunately I have the basic material backed up, so it didn’t die with my laptop hard drive a couple months back. Let that be a lesson to you. And to me, for that matter.

I’ll keep you posted.