"Don't grieve for what doesn't come. Some things that don't happen keep disasters from happening."

Rejection # 89328

Holly Frederick
Curtis Brown, Ltd.
10 Astor Place
New York, New York 10003
USA

(Post card form rejection-first book)

Thank you for your interest in Curtis Brown Ltd. Unfortunately, we do not feel that we are the right agency for your work but wish you success in your search for representation.

Submission Department

**I must say, what a way to start off the month-with a lameass rejection. Yeah, this one took about 4 days to respond--they must be speed readers right? As if.

"I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die."

Rejection # 47857

Gabriel Davis
Loretta Barrett Books, Inc.
101 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10003

(Form rejection-first book)

Dear Author,

Many thanks for the opportunity to consider your work. Please forgive this form letter due to the volume of submissions we receive, we are unable to respond to each one individually, though we do read them all.

Obviously, you want and need an agent who will stand enthusiastically behind your work. Unfortunately, this project did not resonate with me as strongly as I feel it should have in order for me to represent it properly. Publishing is very subjective, though, and another agent may well feel differently.

I do wish you success in finding representation and, once again, thank you for the opportunity to consider your work.

Sincerely yours,

Loretta A. Barrett
President
Loretta Barrett Books, Inc.


***Wow! This response took all of what...2 weeks! Yes, I believe her when she says she took the time to read my material...NOT! And I love how the person I originally sent this query to could not even acknowledge that he receieved it. Anyway, I'm on a roll here. I think this week I've receieved the most rejections...ever. And the week isn't even over yet.

"When you're a writer, you no longer see things with the freshness of the normal person."

Rejection # 35943

Emma Patterson
The Wendy Weil Agency, Inc.
232 Madison Ave, St. 1300
New York, New York 10016

(Post card form rejection-second book)

Thank you for your query. Unfortunately, we are not able to offer you representation at this time.


**All I have to say is....Wow, why even bother responding with this peice of crap response?

Rejection # 70493

Lorin Rees
Helen Rees Literary Agency
376 North Street
Boston, MA 2113

(Form rejection- second book)

Thank you for submitting your material to us.

First, we must apologize for sending a form letter, but the volume of manuscripts and query letters we receive makes this necessary.

We read your material with interest, however, we are not enthusiastic enough to pursue this for you. We are a small agency and do not have the staff to critique everything we receieve. We just did not think we could be successful on your behalf and are sorry that we are unable to be helpful to you.

We wish you good luck and continued inspiration.

Helen Rees Literary Agency

**I really have no comments on this one. It's just the same old same old.

Oh, I have to mention something. For the ones who watch "Castle" are any of you reading the book right now? If you are, is it just me or are some of the sentences a little difficult to comprehend? Sometimes I have to re-read a sentence a few times to finally process what it's saying. I like the book but because of this it's taking me a while to get through it. The writing it is not smooth and flowing. I felt the same way about "Twilight", the author has odd sentence structuring.

"Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life."

Rejection # 69683

Devin McIntyre
Mary Evans, Inc.
242 East Fifth Street
New York, New York 10003

(Form rejection-first book)

Dear Author,

Thank you very much for thinking of Mary Evans Inc. Unfortunately, after careful consideration we have determined that your material is not quite right for us.

We apologize for the impersonal response. Given the large number of queries and manuscripts we receive every week, we are unable to reply to each submission individually.

Thanks again for giving us the opportunity to consider your work and we wish you the best of luck.

Sincerely,

Carlotta Vance

**Careful consideration my ass...another rejection that took 3 days in the making. What a bunch of crock. Anyway, I have a really interesting story to tell. So I went to a new library by my house on Saturday afternoon and out of the blue one of the librarians tells me that another library in the area is having a writer's workshop where a published author, publisher and literary agent will be speaking. I was like, "Whaaatt? Are you kidding me?" I immediately raced out of that library, got in my car and headed for the library which was about ten minutes away. More than anything, I was exremely curious to know who this literary agent was. When I got to the library, there was a flier taped to the window with details on the event. The publisher was some small unknown called, Stevens Publishing--the author was an unknown (to me at least, and I already forget her name but she has free writing classes in my area and I will be attending) Her website is
Damn those rejections
And the literary agent? Can I have a drum roll please....Pat Teal, who rejected me back in July. Here is the link to my blog post about her http://rejectionqueen.blogspot.com/2009/07/writing-comes-more-easily-if-you-have.html
Anyway, I remembered right off the bat the note she wrote on my rejection letter and I was anticapting finally seeing what this woman looked like. I was expecting her to be this highly sophisticated, 30-40s in age, woman. Wow, boy was I wrong! In comes a little old lady who was probably about 80 years old. I swear I am not exageratting when I describe her--curly white fro hair, big coke bottle glasses--oh and those legs old women get...you know those swollen elephant legs (Honestly, I'm not picking on her or trying to be mean--just describing what I was seeing.) Anyway, one look at her and I thought, "Is this what most literary agents are like?" For some reason, I can't see her selling books. And I'm assuming she's a one woman show. Speaking of old, even the author was old---most of the people in the room were old. Geez, this only brought one thing to mind. "Will I be old by the time I get a freaking literary agent?" Besides all that, the workshop basically told me everything I already knew. In fact, I thought I could teach the class. It was actually reasurring to know that I was right on with everything these people were talking about. I was agreeing with everything they were saying, 100 percent. In the end, this was pretty much a 3 hour waste of time. I enjoyed the experience but I didn't learn anything new. I will tell you that the best part was seeing a real literary agent up close and personal. Hey, she even read responses to her rejection letters from crazy people. The best was a person who wrote her back saying she was BLACK LISTED! Hiliarious.

"An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate."

Rejection # 35697

Laura Nolan
The Creative Culture
47 East 19th Street
3rd Floor
New York, New York 10003

(Form rejection-my first book)

Dear Author,

Many thanks for your recent submission. We apologize that, due to the volume of mail we recieve, we are not able to respond to you more personally regarding your work.

We have looked over your material, but we are sorry to ay that it is not suited to the agents at our company at this time. We wish you the best of luck elsewhere, however, and thank you for allowing us to consider your work.

Sincerely,

The Creative Culture.

**This is pure BS! I literally sent this query out 3 days ago...jeebuz...some agents just lie straight through their teeth! They are actually doing me a favor because I would not want to deal with a shady agent who ends up stiffing me.

"The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession."

Rejection # 64931

Gail Ross
Gail Ross Literary Agency, LLC.
1666 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20009

Dear Ms. Jenny,

Thank you for sending me your query for XXX.

As you may know, publishing remains a cut-throat business. Even before the recent precipitous job cuts, publishers have been consolidating and laying off editors for years. This makes an agent's job very difficult, so Gail has decided to focus her energy exclusively on non-fiction book proposals.

We are thus not accepting fiction manuscripts. I know it can be very different to determine which agents represent which genres, and I apologize for any confusion.

Best of luck find a suitable agent.

Yours,

Jennifer Manguera

**This rejection is honest enough. I have nothing to say about this rejection. Oh on the publishing front. I check my mailbox everyday for what will be a rejection letter for my first manuscript. Last time she rejected me in three weeks and it's around that time so I'm assuming it should be anyday now. I hate to be negative, but I'm just realistic.

"The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from."

Rejection # 69432

Natanya Wheeler
Lowenstein Associates
121 W. 27th Street, Suite 601
New York, New York 10001

(Form rejection) (My first book)

Dear Author:

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your work. Unfortunately, I do not feel strongly enough about your project to pursue it further.

As I am sure you can imagine, we receive a tremendous number of submissions, and we are force to limit our focus to a select group of projects. Agenting is very subjective, and even though we could not take on your project at this time, another agent might feel differently.

Please accept my best wishes for success in your writing career.

Sincerely,

Barbara Lowenstein

*Um, too bad I didn't even address my query to "Barbara" wtf?

Anyway on to more interesting things. I have to say that Richard Castle's "Heat Wave" is highly entertaining. It's written exactly like the show and you can actually hear the television characters speaking in this book. It's funny and witty and I have been laughing my arse off. Everyone should buy it. BTW, in L.A. today at Farmer's Market, Nathan Fillion (Richard Castle) will be signing "Heat Wave" at Barnes and Noble. Damn, I really wanted to go but it's a little to far for me. I know hundreds of people will be here and it probably won't be worth it. Oh well, maybe next time :(