Fun With Neologisms

I was cruising around the web today and found a fellow writer who got a partial request, on the same day I did, from the very same agent. Now, it seems to me there should be some word for this, so I coined the term 'querysib.' As in we're query siblings.

Now I want to come up with more terms but I'm drawing a blank, so feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section. I'm looking for words for the following phenomena. Have at it!

• When you look your manuscript over a dozen times, are certain you've fixed every typo and spelling error, send it to an agent, and immediately afterwards find a mistake.
• When you query an agent and then follow them on Twitter, in the vain hope that the agent will mention your manuscript or query on the Twitter feed. The word I'm looking for is something other than 'stalking.' Not that I've ever done this.
• When Agent #1 has your partial or a full, you receive feedback from Agent #2, realize to your horror the mistakes you've made, make revisions, and then re-submit to Agent #1, even though you know you're really not supposed to.
• The paradox where when things are slow in your personal life, things are slow with your writing. But when your life is crazy and hectic, that's when agents start responding and making requests for sample pages.
  

Mock Query: The Nanerpuss Code

**Warning** Fake Query Ahead. Keep out of reach of agents, LOLcats, and small children. Do not attempt at home. No cyborgs with Austrian accents were harmed in the making of this query.

Dear Colleen… I feel like I can call you Colleen since I met you once at an IHOP five months ago. You might remember me, I waved to you and bounced up and down and ran to my car to show you my 300,000 word religious-themed memoir. But when I came back, you were hiding in the bathroom and you wouldn’t come out no matter how much I tried to entice you with my clever and witty reading of my manuscript. Then the security guards came and rudely dragged me away, so unfortunately I didn’t get to chapter five of my memoir, which is when it got really good.

Anyways, I’ve written a new book now and I know you’re closed to submissions, but this query actually comes from the future, when you’ll be open to submissions again. For you see, in the year 2012, on August 29 at approximately 2:14am, the Skynet Global Digital Defense Network gains sentience and launches a war of extinction against the human race. I know, what a bummer. Can you imagine what that does to the publishing industry?

Now I’m sending this query from the future, at the behest of the leader of the human resistance, Jessica Faust, to ask you to please agent my manuscript, The Nanerpuss Code. I know what you’re thinking: What does The Nanerpuss Code have to do with the salvation of the human race? Everything, my dear Ms. Lindsay, everything.

For at Book Expo America 2011, on a sunny, pleasant day, the architect of Skynet shall wander by and in a freak accident, be crushed to death by a pile of Nanerpuss Code galleys, preventing the completion of Skynet and saving not only the human race, but the publishing world as we know it. No, really, it's a good thing, trust me.

So, to sum up: Represent The Nanerpuss Code, save the world. The fate of the future lies in your hands!

Up to No Good

Hello! Good afternoon! I'm still hanging in there! Here's the latest: I did get a very kind rejection from the agent I mentioned in the earlier posts, but it was the most complimentary rejection I've ever received, so maybe I'm making some progress. I do have other people looking at the manuscript that I'm very excited about, so we'll see, hopefully I can one day find that agent who loves my work and is a good match.

In the mean time, I think I'm going to busy myself by writing another mock query letter. And I'll probably start work soon on the sequel to Knights of Avalon. The book's main character, Justine, is very pushy and has been bugging me to get started. Yeah, my characters have minds of their own, and they talk to me.