I sent out a ton of query letters to literary agents this weekend.  Unlike the other publishing I’ve done in periodicals and textbooks, with novels, you don’t send your samples directly to publishers.   Instead, you send them to agents.  If the agents are intrigued, they ask to see your full manuscript, and if they think they can sell it, they help you find interested publishers and negotiate a deal for you.

From the research I did, it seems like there’s a pretty good market for this type of book, which is pretty much “woman gets into hilarious adventures.”  It’s not the most hoity-toity literary thing I’ve ever written, but it’s fun and would be a good airplane read.  It would be very exciting to see my book in an airport bookstore.  Since I travel a lot, I often find myself killing time during layovers by wandering around in airport booksellers, and I see all the books and think about the people who wrote them.  Wouldn’t it be crazy to be one of those people?

My goal was to write a book before I turn 30, and I’ve done that much.  The loftier goals (getting it published, making it into a whole series, making enough money out of it that I can quit my day job, going to glamorous book signings, hanging out with Hemingway, being advisor for the movie version starring Chloe Sevigny) can wait.

The Hemingway part might have to wait until science has advanced to the point where he can be cloned from the DNA found under the claws of the descendents of his six-toed cats.  We’ll see.