Some More News...

Again - major apologies for not keeping you posted. Things have been looking up - at least I'm moving in the right direction. Here's a recap of what has been happening with the novel:

• In the past 6 months, I've sent ~60 queries to different agents as referenced in the Writer's Marketplace. 60 queries, 30 rejections and one request for more of the novel that later turned into a rejection.
• I started talking to Joe Quirk over at SFGate.com's City Brights. We had a conversation that later turned into this blog post about getting published.
• Later conversations with Joe turned into this conversation - I'll just quote it:

"If your first 15 pages is killer, your goal is to get them to turn over the letter and read page one. They will decide to turn you down by the bottom of page one. If they are hooked, they make keep
reading, then call you and ask for the rest. Despite their
frustration with the "slush pile," agents long to find the next new
writer."

and my response was:
Joe - I have no way to tell whether my novel is a slow opener, other than to simply give you the first two or three pages and see what you think. All I really need is 'slow-opener' or not - or "this sucks" or not No other work required. Thanks and apologies in advance
...and then I sent the first 3 pages of the novel to him. Joe's response was:

Holy s***, dude, the answer is Yes.
You passed this test: I said, "Uh-oh, another writer wants me to read his chapter. Will I have to tell him it's bad? Let me just glance at the first sentence and look at it later. Hey, I just read a whole paragraph. Hey this is ... "
Then my mind turned off and I just read. That's a sign of a good story. I say, just a mention of who you published with, an opening paragraph, and then this chapter with an SASE, and you're good to go. Send to 25 agents at once.

And so I have a best-selling author telling me that he loves what I wrote. If that's not the definition of 'awesome', I don't know what is.