I guess the whine-free zone stopped here.

My story "Orcs and Trolls" is up at Every Day Fiction! It's a fun little story, or at least I think so.

I'm glad it was posted today, since it eased the sting a little of the form reject for my requested partial. So far for that book I've sent out--holy crap--21 queries (six of them the new and improved query) and received 12 form rejects, 7 non-responses, and 2 partial requests that ended in form rejects. Since most agents request pages along with the query (and the two partial requests came from agents who don't), I suspect the problem at this point isn't my query but my writing.

So I'm not really sure what to do. I work hard at this, and while I know I'm not very good at evaluating my own work, I'm pretty sure I don't suck completely. I also know that "not sucking" is not going to pop me to the top of any agent's list. I just didn't expect such across-the-board disinterest in what I consider my most accessible manuscript. (I mean, it doesn't have any weredeer in it and it's not written in the style of a 1920s British murder mystery like the other two projects I'm pimping right now.)

I dunno. I'm starting to suspect that all my books must be flawed in some basic and irredeemable fashion that I'm incapable of seeing. It certainly seems clear that The Taste of Magic isn't going to interest any agents and there are only about four SF/F publishers left that still accept non-agented material.

Why yes, I am feeling bitter and discouraged right now. How did you guess?

I'll work on getting back into the whine-free zone tomorrow.