Pride of the Lions: Query

When you write a manuscript, there's one surefire way to remain unpublished. Never send it to anyone. I recently broke out of the egocentric, show nobody my book funk by joining a couple of online critique groups. That's step one. You can learn a lot when people tear your words to shreds, or give it a few nice words that are so darn encouraging.

I made a connection. Through a friend who had been published by a small university press, I got the name of the editor at said press. My natural next move was to hide under my desk. No, I read as much as I could about query letters and composed one of my own. I wrote it, had the wife review it and add some of her own helpful hints. I wrote the initial e-mail and saved as a draft. I needed a subject line. Drat! If only I worked in the e-mail marketing industry! Oh yeah, I do. After finding out that the general query letter has a subject line of Query: Title, that's what I added. I saved as draft again.

This was like the epic stare-down I had with the pool when I was ten. My mom offered me a trifling sum, probably a Transformers toy, if I would dive off the diving board just once. I was afraid to do it. As my stubborn nature would indicate, I stared at the pool for an hour before jumping in. I wouldn't even dive at the starting gun of swim meets. I eventually got over it.

I hit the send button.