During my month off I still spent two hours every day at work researching agents and writing query letters describing who I was and the book I had written. If the letter intrigued any agents they’d ask to see a portion of the novel or maybe even the whole thing. If they liked what they read and thought it sellable, they’d offer representation. Such is the process. After two weeks I had ten letters. It was my goal to send out fifteen before I started editing the book. After each reply, whether it was a request or a decline, I’d send another. That way, I’d always have fifteen letters in circulation.
At the end of April, I printed the fifteen letters. I signed them all and sealed them in individually stamped envelopes addressed to agents in New York City. I carried the letters home, smiling proudly at what I was certain was the dawn of a new era. Carolyn was at the desk when I sauntered in. I removed the letters from my bag and handed them to her.
“All the queries,” I said. “Bless them for good luck.”
She took them in her hands. “This is them?”
“You bet.”
She thumbed through and tenderly kissed each and every one, and when she was done she looked at me with those big green eyes of hers and they were full of such confidence that I knew I couldn’t fail, not this, not now. It was a look that alone made the time and energy it took to write the novel worth it, reminding me again just how beautiful her eyes really were. Never once in the months that we’d been together had they ceased to amaze me, and I knew they never would in much the same way that regardless of how many times a person flies into and out of New York, the city’s skyline, as viewed from above, never fails to inspire.
“All ready,” she said and handed them back.
I took them from her and walked out into the April air and glided to the big blue mailbox at the end of the street. “Godspeed,” I said aloud, and then let them all fall from my hand into the box.
twenty-three