Living on a Prayer

"You show up in an agent's inbox trying to sell them on you and your book, without it feeling like you lit a bag of sh*t on fire and ran."

You know you're murdery when your husband breathes — yes, breathes — and it irritates you. That was a while back, in my defense. And yes, I called him Darth Vader and got evicted from our shared office space over it. Solid marriage advice, free of charge: if you both work from home, sharing an office is grounds for problems. Trust.

I bring it up solely because I have a guilty conscience. My stepson gets here Sunday, and what used to be his room and the guest bedroom is now my office — my cave of solitude, if we're being honest. I feel like a jackass about it, honestly, but justifiable jackass, thank you very much. Now it gets used every day. Unless I’m murdery and put myself in timeout (aka Starbucks).

What’s up with the book?

We worked on the pitch paragraph, which is long AF, and covers what the book is about and who I am — humble brag time — plus the back cover copy. I used Claude to explain what's actually required and how to structure both, and yes, I had it write me a version first. Calm your tits, no AI is gracing the actual pages of my book. It's a helper. A research buddy. It walked me through the query process, helped me research agents, and built me a spreadsheet that tracks every query I send out.

The hard part was not letting it get overly witty and creative on me. I made myself stick to the facts mostly, and then went back through and had to weave the real slim shady Becca back in so it didn't read boring.

What the F is a query, you ask?

It's basically the book version of a cold call. Or door-to-door sales. You show up in an agent's inbox and try to sell them on you and your book without it feeling like you lit a bag of sh*t on fire and ran.

I also had Claude help me build a spreadsheet to actually track every query I send — who, when, what they said back, status — because otherwise I would 100% lose track and re-email the same poor agent twice like an unhinged person. And I'll admit something: it's actually a little fun. There's this weird flutter every time I think about opening my inbox. Is today the "we love it, send more" day? Or is it just crickets. Again.

I know from years in sales that rejection after rejection is going to pour in before anything sticks. That's just the game, and I made peace with that math a long time ago. And for the love of f*ck — J.K. Rowling got rejected by twelve different publishers before Harry Potter happened. Twelve. And we all know how that turned out.

I asked how many queries it typically takes to land an agent while I was researching, bracing for something that would make me want to lie down on the kitchen floor. Somewhere between 30 and 70, normally. Some people sign after 8. Some send over 100. One informal poll of agented authors came back with answers ranging from 4 queries to 125.

So the disparity in numbers here is massive, people. It's like a doctor telling you that you have terminal cancer and you could live 5 days or you could live 5 years, it just depends. Cool talk, bro. Suuupppper helpful. What the research does spell out clearly is that there's no correlation between how many queries you send and how good the book actually is.

Who is my agent?

Finding the right agents looks a little like speed dating, honestly. You're not trying to find someone who repped a bestseller you'd recognize — you're trying to find the agent who's already into your specific weird corner of the shelf. That's where comp titles come in. Comparable titles. Books already out in the world that sit next to yours in tone and audience, the "if you liked this, you'll love that" shorthand agents actually use to place a manuscript. Mine's Tough Titties. Same funny-raw-no-apologies energy, same reader already primed to want more of exactly that. When an agent already reps something in that lane, that's not a coincidence I'm hoping for. That's the whole strategy.

So no, I will not have an agent by next Tuesday. Neither will you, probably, if you're doing this too. I hear it's a slow game, not something that gets accepted anytime super soon. Sigh. In retrospect, maybe I should've been querying while I was still editing. But I'm happy where we're at.

My goal is to batch 12 at a time. They're tricky, though — every single agent has different submission parameters and different things they want to see. I feel like a schoolgirl hoping to get chosen in PE, praying to God I'm not picked last.

MANUSCRIPT STATS

✅ Pitch paragraph: locked (long AF, but locked).

✅ Back cover copy: locked.

🧠 Query process: Likely long (so it’s pending)

📊 Agent tracker: built and live

🎯 Comp titles: locked in (hi, Tough Titties).

🎯 Goal: batch queries 12 at a time, parameters permitting.

🪑 Office status: under new (temporary) management. Praying for my sanity.