Diana Fox

We're living in the future

2008-05-13T21:44:44Z

Somebody sent me a query last night from a BlackBerry. At midnight.

(I will post a real entry soon, I just found that too hilarious not to share.)

dianafox @ 2008-05-03T21:32:00

2008-05-04T01:38:22Z

I spent all day answering email, and now have less than a hundred queries left in my inbox. To celebrate, I thought I would pick out a new (already published, not by one of my clients) book to read for pleasure, and as usual thinking about what I was in the mood for got me thinking about what I represent.

My current authors write in genres ranging from science fiction to fantasy (urban and historical), YA fantasy (literary & commercial), other YA (contemporary), literary fiction, romantic suspense, thrillers, romance/erotica (contemporary & paranormal)... and then it occurred to me, you know what’s missing from this list? Historical romance! Historical fiction, period. I have very few historical fiction writers right now, and NO writers of historical romance. I worked with an amazing agent who represented lots of it, I’m an avid reader of the genre, and somehow I have no clients who write historical romance of the kind I love to read... yet.

It probably doesn’t help that I’m extremely selective about what I like in historical romance--more so even than is normal for me--but I grew up devouring the work of Laura Kinsale (my all time favorite romance novelist), Jo Beverley, Mary Jo Putney, Loretta Chase, Judith Ivory, Anita Mills, Mary Balogh, Anne Stuart, Susan Johnson, Madeline Hunter, Julia Ross, Gayle Feyrer, Tracy Grant, Carla Kelly, and many other authors I still read to this day, although some of them are no longer publishing or have stopped writing straight historicals.

(If anyone is interested, I also cut my teeth on Julie Garwood, Judith McNaught, Jude Deveraux, Catherine Coulter, Johanna Lindsey, Meagan McKinney, Bertrice Small, Virginia Henley, Brenda Joyce, Marsha Canham, Rebecca Brandewyne, Iris Johansen, Jayne Anne Krentz, Gayle Wilson, Christina Skye, Marjorie Farrell, and again, a host of others I can’t think of off the top of my head right now. I am leaving out authors like Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Dunnett, and Jane Austen as well, because I feel they are in a separate class as inventors of their own subgenres.)

As far as what I’m looking for now--to read and represent--recently published books by new authors which I’ve adored include The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran, Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas, The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne, and pretty much everything Lydia Joyce has ever written. So, if any of you can think of other historical romances I might like, I’d love suggestions in the comments. (And if you write books like this and are looking for an agent, please query me!)

Finally, would it be good if I posted more lists along these lines? Or other types of lists? I can’t promise I’ll do so, but I enjoy list-making and find it a relaxing and useful means of procrastination.

dianafox @ 2008-04-29T17:13:00

2008-04-29T22:54:49Z

I haven't blogged before now because I have been busy working and clearing out my inbox... I am down to less than 200 messages to answer, which is heartening but took most of the weekend to accomplish. An update on the slush situation, partially re-posted from Verla Kay here:

I usually try to answer queries in a month or less, although I've gotten kind of slammed so I'm a little behind at the moment. I hope to get through most of what's left from the end of March and beginning of April in the next few days, and it's always okay to re-query if it's been a while, or you're worried that I might not have gotten your email... I don't mind! (And by "a while", I mean if it's been more than a month on a query, or more than 6-8 weeks if I have your manuscript. If these response windows change, I'll post about it to my AgentQuery and Publishers Marketplace pages.)

Some people have written to ask which of my two email addresses they should use for querying me, and the answer is that either my first name or 'submissions' at foxliterary.com will work; I do have the spam filters set up a little differently for these two addresses, but mail should get to me from both of them. I prefer to be queried at the submissions address because then I can just look at the header and know it's a submission--also, if you put the word query AND the title of your book in the subject line, that makes my life easier when sorting through email.

I should also add that any preferences I state here should be viewed as helpful suggestions, not draconian rules which will cause me to auto-reject a query! I see receiving submissions as a privilege, not a right. I appreciate how hard people work at this process and I'm not interested in judging anyone for things like accidentally sending the same email twice, forgetting to include sample pages at the end of your email, using the less preferred address, etc. (believe it or not, these are mistakes even agents have been known to make--sometimes even with editors!--because we're human too). And, yes, I realize it's somewhat contradictory to encourage both perfectionism and detachment, but querying agents is hard enough on both sides that I sometimes just want to tell authors that it's all right to relax a little. Neither they nor I are ever going to be perfect. At our best, we're still going to learn and improve.

Which leads to today's question (from takroc) --

What is your opinion on critique groups? Live face to face ones and the online variety?

I am very much for them, with the caveat that just as with anything else it's important to have a good one, and a dysfunctional critique group may be worse than no critique group. Overall, however, I think they're invaluable and almost all my clients have made use of them.

As far as online vs. face to face, it's what works best for the individual that's important. While the Internet offers wonderful resources for helping people find and participate in a critique group that is right for them (as well as a way for people to measure whether a group is helpful by talking to people in other groups about what does or doesn't work for them personally), I don't think it matters where the group meets as long as it helps create better writers!

And with that I will go back to answering queries.

dianafox @ 2008-04-23T13:54:00

2008-04-23T19:14:02Z

First, I’m thrilled by the amount of submissions I’ve received over the past week--I have been working my way through them as quickly as I can, but thank you to everyone who’s been spreading the word and please keep those queries coming! Before I talk about the query process, though, I wanted to answer a question from sirenecheval, who asked

There are more and more agents blogging these days, many for many reasons. What are your reasons?

I will start off with a confession:

I never wanted to blog. There are already so many great agent blogs out there, and I resisted for years because I thought, what are the odds that I am going to have anything to say that one of them hasn't covered more than adequately at one time or another? I used to joke that if I ever had a blog I would probably just end up posting about taxes and other fascinating things nobody else ever seems to write about.

However, I do think it's important to have a place to publicize what's going on with clients and the agency, and to be able to answer questions from potential clients. More than that, I realized that there were some things that were unique to me that it might be useful to share, and also that I really do love talking about myself and could doubtless get used to doing it on the Internet if I tried. (This may or may not coincide with my talking about publishing, but hopefully it will to some extent since I'm assuming that that's what most of you are here to read about.)

That said, one thing that’s a little different about me and the query process that I want to mention right away is that I almost always request full manuscripts rather than partials. That’s because I use email for everything. Even if you send me a paper query letter, if you include your email address--and you should always include your email address!--I’m going to email you with my request, and ask you to send me an electronic copy of your manuscript.

I do get that it’s exciting to receive a request for a full as opposed to a partial because it can be a way of gauging an agent’s level of interest, and I think this is still the case… when dealing with hard copy submissions. In that case, requesting partials makes sense, because it saves space as well as money spent on postage. With email, if I ask for the full manuscript, that way it’s in my inbox and I can read as much or as little as I like without having to email the author more than one request. This saves time for everyone involved.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll try to answer comments and update again soon with answers to the rest of your questions.

dianafox @ 2008-04-18T21:50:00

2008-04-19T02:00:04Z

Thanks so much for all your comments, and the warm welcome.

I've spent the entire day at New York Comic Con and now I am going to go watch Battlestar Galactica before I fall into bed, but I'll post again after the convention is over... Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Intro post

2008-04-17T04:57:32Z

Hi! I'll be posting here about my career as a literary agent and other publishing stuff. I'm an infrequent blogger at best so it will probably just be agency news and announcements about my clients for the most part, but feel free to suggest other topics or ask me questions in the comments.