On my world, it means hope.

I've seen it said that all books need conflict. I would disagree with that and say instead: all books need tension.

2023 had a lot of action movie duds. Those movies were definitely full of conflict, yet for the ones that I watched and wasn't in love with, they lacked tension.

What is tension? I define it as the reader's guess/expectation that something will happen. Or, in the words of Dan Brown (probably paraphrased), it's posing a question and then promising that if the reader keeps reading, they'll get the answer. Romance novels are often criticized by people who don't read the genre for being formulaic, but the tension in romance comes from knowing the main couple will get together, but not exactly how they will. It's why they're so compulsively readable for fans of the genre. Crucially, tension involves uncertainty. If a story is completely predictable, there is no tension.

Recently, I read A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal, and ended up feeling bored out of my skull after roughly the 20% mark. It's a heist book—it was definitely full of conflict. But I didn't feel any sense of tension. Like, sure, the main characters have to pull off this heist or else they'll lose their beloved teahouse. But we know that failure isn't really an option because otherwise why are we reading this book, so...?

I find that action-packed books with tension often achieve that tension by introducing a conflict underlying the main action plot. Either a character-based conflict, or multiple conflicts in a single action setpiece. For example, in Voyage of the Damned by Frances White, protagonist Dee isn't just investigating the murders to get justice for his loved one and because he and his friends might become the next targets—he's also trying to hide the fact that he's the only powerless person on the cruise ship. Or, in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, when Ethan Hunt and co. attempt to steal the nuclear codes at the Burj Khalifa, they're not just stealing the codes because they can't let them fall into the wrong hands; they're also gambling on not having their identities uncovered, which would ruin their whole mission.

It's taken me a while to be able to articulate my problems with A Tempest of Tea, and I think it boils down to a few things: (1) The characters never fail in their goals, so even when they encounter obstacles, there isn't much tension that something bad could happen to them. (In Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, by contrast, we see the main characters lose the nuclear codes multiple times, which really heightens the stakes.) And (2) none of the twists were foreshadowed ahead of time, so while they should have been sources of tension throughout most of the book, they weren't.

And that's why I ended up bored out of my skull while reading the book.

So.........I thought I would take a break from writing/revising, but I found myself feeling so antsy that I decided to start revising Novel #4. (I've also run out of ARCs and books to read for the time being, sigh.)

Miraculously, I do have some ideas for how to revise the book now. Not ideas for major rewrites, but tweaks here and there to make the mystery more interesting and possibly make individual scenes more compelling.

But that's led me to feel sour, too.

Being a marginalized person, especially a multiply marginalized person, in traditional publishing often feels like not only are the barriers higher for you than others, but also, no one cares enough to mentor you to improve. You have to be twice as good as your peers, because if not, gatekeepers will just say "you're not good enough" and leave you to flounder on your own to figure out how to get better.

All of my beta readers loved Novel #4. My agent didn't point out any major problems with it. But I did not get a single bit of useful feedback from all the editors who rejected it. The "kindest" rejections were "I just didn't feel drawn into the story enough" or subjective reasons for rejecting. The worst were the ghosts and the form rejections. Only one editor even commented on the premise, which I thought was a fresh and compelling hook, but apparently editors didn't.

It just feels like I'm left to fumble in the dark and figure out how to edit my books perfectly myself before editors will take me seriously.

When I was originally querying to try to get an agent, I often heard, "A bad agent is worse than no agent." And I often scoffed. "It's easy to say that when you already have an agent," I thought. "You don't understand how desperate querying authors are."

Well, now that I'm on the other side, I have to agree. A bad agent is worse than no agent.

I've started spiraling today because I'm increasingly getting the sense that my agent isn't aggressive enough in her submission strategy and that might have wasted a lot of my time. I've been on submission with Novel #4 since January of this year, and I have to be honest: I've been very mentally unwell for most of the year. I've talked a bit about it in previous blog posts, but to reiterate: I was so sure Novel #4 was commercial. Except it just fell flat for editors, for some reason. But no one has really identified a problem with the execution; it's all just vague form rejections or "I wasn't as invested in the story as I wanted."

The toll that took on my mental health was...really bad. I honestly feel like I've wasted this entire year stuck in a pit of severe, constant anxiety that prevented me from doing other things.

Because I still BELIEVE this book is good enough and hooky enough for a publisher to pick it up. I read traditionally published Adult Fantasy aggressively; I know this book is commercial.

So...since there are only two editors still considering my book, I asked my agent if we could go on submission in the UK. I've noticed that many agents for US-based Adult SFF authors regularly go on submission in the US and UK simultaneously, I think because the market is so small. I assumed my agent had strategic reasons for not wanting to do so and respected that. She even told me she was willing to consider UK publishers during the second round of submission (...and then proceeded not to do so and not explain to me why she'd changed her mind).

But...apparently my agent's reason for not going on submission to the UK was essentially "I've never done it before and the agency doesn't like the idea."

I've spoken to other authors who told me that going on submission to the UK actually helped them get a US deal/get a better US deal. Especially because UK editors read much more quickly than US editors, for some reason.

And now I can't help thinking that, if I had gone on submission on the UK and US simultaneously for this book, I might have already sold the book by now.

That's the part that kills me the most. I can't handle feeling like I've wasted so much time, that I've spent so much time stewing in anxiety and stress that could have been avoided.

And yes, this is one thing, but I'm starting to feel like there are a bunch of little things about my agent that have made me uncomfortable that are adding up to my desire to seek new representation. It's difficult, though, because there aren't any major red flags; she's supportive of whatever I want to write, and I think her pitch letters and submission lists are fine, and she is collaborative and welcomes my input on strategy. But here are the things that have made me uncomfortable over the years:

- With the novel I signed with her (Novel #3), I had the sense that she was giving up on the novel when it didn't sell after the first round. I remember being shocked on that phone call when she asked if I wanted to shelve it, even though when I pressed her, she said she had more editors she could go out to. Ultimately, I had to reach out to my mentor, who proposed a new submission strategy that I proposed to my agent. That strategy didn't end up working and the novel died on submission, and I think we should have persisted in submitting it as a romance instead of trying a new genre. But I felt forced into a corner because I got the sense that my agent was giving up.

- With Novel #3, there was a period in which an editor wanted to make an offer, but a month later, the answer we got back was a rejection. During that entire month, I never heard back from my agent, so I assumed the publisher still hadn't said anything and I was going out of my mind with the silence. I later learned that my agent had been corresponding with the publisher during that month, and she just...never told me. She implied I should have asked her if I wanted updates. But WHY would I assume she had been hiding things from me about a potential offer situation??? Especially since I had said on my offer call that I wanted full transparency regarding my career???

- In general, I said multiple times over our nearly 3-year relationship that knowing as much as possible was the only thing that assuaged my anxiety about submission, and she continually failed to inform me of things, including: her communications with the publisher who initially wanted to buy Novel #3, her decision to start a second round of submission for Novel #4 (even though I said I wanted to have a discussion before starting a new round), and she never followed up when I suggested a particular imprint to submit Novel #4 to.

- For the next novel, the one still on submission (Novel #4), I was impatient to get on submission ASAP, partly because I hated experiencing the death of my first novel on submission, partly because I was afraid publishers would decide to no longer prioritize diverse submissions (which ended up becoming true). My agent took a long time getting edit notes to me each time, which I didn't want to press her about because I didn't want to sound like a dick (her timelines also weren't overly long compared to other agents). But she also wanted to go through many rounds of edits and "take our time" editing, even though she had no developmental edits to suggest and only had clarifying questions/line edits. She also never brought up submission strategy until I brought up my own pitch proposal and argument for why now was a good time to go on submission based on other recent acquisitions. Which, again, I do like collaborating on submission strategy...but at the same time, I was worried that if she didn't have a vision for how to pitch my book and was only following my lead, she wasn't truly passionate about the book. And if she's unaware of market trends until I told her about them...? On top of all of that, she was very hesitant to provide a submission timeline, even when I asked.

- In April of this year, after we went on submission in January, I was beginning to spiral. I knew many people regularly received reassurances from their agent while dealing with anxiety, and while I had never done that before, I decided to give it a shot. Ultimately, the email she sent to me wasn't helpful. Instead of saying "I still love and believe in your book and will do everything I can to sell it," she told me I should reevaluate my career and what I really wanted to write. Which was not only useless advice, but also condescending, considering I've been trying to break into the traditional publishing industry since 2016. I've become more thick-skinned over the years, but I was still in a vulnerable mindset at the time; if I had been younger, her words probably would've made me break down.

- We had a phone call when we were down to two editors still considering Novel #4. She suggested my book was too "put-downable." I was honestly a bit annoyed and argued that that seemed completely subjective and wasn't feedback I could meaningfully incorporate into either this book or my future work, to which she had no response. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt since I knew from my own personal experience that some people try to frame failure as something you could have done differently even if it was completely out of your control, but I don't really appreciate being told I should have done something differently when we weren't given any concrete feedback as to something being poorly done in the manuscript and we have no control over industry trends.

- My two latest books, Novel #4 and Novel #5 (which is not yet finished), are deeply rooted in Chinese folklore and culture. My agent never asked me how to pronounce the characters' names or explain the Chinese cultural references that I said were foundational to my books after she admitted she had never heard of them. At the time, these seemed like small things, but in combination with everything else...

- I pitched Novel #5 to her. She was supportive, but objected to the level of violence in the book (which, by the way, is not even as bad as the violence in Game of Thrones). And I was like, (1) the level of violence is literally a major issue that the characters grapple with! It's not there gratuitously! And (2) this is an ADULT FANTASY? Since when am I not allowed to include violence in an ADULT fantasy novel???

- I sent her a pitch document I made for Novel #5, I think because I was subconsciously and preemptively wary after I had to present her a pitch strategy for Novel #4. She asked if I envisioned Novel #5 as a trilogy because of two of the comp titles I used. Except...NEITHER of those comp titles sold as trilogies. They both sold as duologies (and one of them read as a standalone, just like what I envisioned for Novel #5). This really didn't help my impression that she is less familiar with fantasy releases than the other genres she represents.

- Her explaining that the agency doesn't like submitting to the UK, as I explained above, really made me uncomfortable. To be fair, this seems to be an issue with the agency, not necessarily her decision, but the reasons they provided either made no sense or seemed way overblown, including:

• "If you don't sell well in the UK, you might not get another book deal" - Oh, you mean like exactly the same thing that would happen with a US publisher if I don't sell well in the US???
• "UK publishers don't pay much" - I have literally seen six-figure preempts from UK publishers this year. That's just blatantly not true.
• "You might not see your books in US bookstores if you have a UK deal" - I mentioned that several UK SFF publishers seemed to have obtained US distribution rights recently (because I see their books in my local bookstore and I'm able to buy their ebooks in the US). She did not address that point at all.
• "UK publishers might get world rights" - (a) Isn't it literally her job to negotiate and try to retain world rights for me? (b) US publishers have already rejected my book, so why does that matter at this point?
• "UK publishers may not do much marketing in the US" - (a) Wouldn't it be logical that they would do most of their marketing in the UK? (b) US publishers don't always guarantee marketing efforts either???
• "You would have to pay more taxes and fees" - (a) Double taxation agreements exist, so...this sounds like fake news; (b) the exchange rate between US dollars and pounds is favorable...

And again, I don't understand why we shouldn't be aggressive now that it seems likely the book will die in the US. Not wanting to go on submission in the UK at the start of submission for strategic reasons is something I can consider, but why is no deal considered better than a UK deal???

- I told her I wanted to proceed with UK sub. She then asked me AGAIN to confirm that I was okay with all the negative reasons not to sell to the UK. That was when I realized that even though she said twice that she was willing to support me, for some reason, she was now actively trying to talk me out of pursuing this course of action. She wasn't treating me like a business partner; if she had, we would've had a discussion about the pros and cons, the risks and what we can do to mitigate the risks, and how we can strategize if my career isn't ideal. Instead, she didn't even reassure me that she would try to negotiate to hold onto North American rights until I specifically asked her, and even then, she framed it as "I'll try but it might not be possible." Like...I negotiate contracts for a living. I know there are always things you have to give up on, but also that you should fight like hell to get your client the best possible contract. The fact that she wouldn't even say that she would do her best to fight for my interests left me both not reassured and also wondering how much she planned on negotiating at all.

So...yeah.

Right now, I'm thinking that if Novel #4 dies after the UK submission round, I will do some serious reflection on whether to leave my agent before going on submission with Novel #5, since I'll at least have something fresh to query other agents with.

I've been reading—or trying to read—mystery books because that's where I see my writing career going in the future (since I've run out of the ability to emotionally invest in enough characters to ever be a career romance writer). And I've learned a couple of things about myself.

Mostly, I've learned that when I read a mystery, I want a fast-paced mystery. I've had a hard time enjoying Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries (gasp, yes, I know) because I just don't have patience for a hundred pages describing all these random townspeople living their lives before the murder happens, even if the information turns out to be important later. I don't know if this is because I used to watch a lot of police procedural TV shows (like Elementary and Lucifer) and am used to a dead body turning up right away, or if I'm more suited to reading thrillers. All I know is that if there's going to be a murder in this book, I want to see the dead body and the investigation begin ASAP.

On a related note: I might have mentioned this in previous entries, but I've tried to read some fantasy murder mysteries—since Novel #4 is my attempt at writing a fantasy murder mystery—and I find that they're often paced more like fantasy novels than like mysteries. In other words, their pacing is often quite slow. Slow enough that I usually DNF those books. I might hate the Dresden Files for being misogynistic dumpster fires, but at least they have mystery pacing nailed down correctly. Again, if I'm reading a murder mystery, I expect murder mystery pacing. I don't want very slow, drawn-out sequences explaining the fantasy elements or recruiting the protagonist to a fantasy agency; at least, not at the very beginning of the book. I want a murder investigation as soon as possible.

I don't know; maybe when it comes to books, unlike movies or TV, authors feel like they have to spend time getting the reader to like the protagonist before the murder happens? But I've always been of the opinion that getting the reader to like the protagonist should be something that can be accomplished quickly, in less than a chapter. I don't need to know everything about a character to like them; I don't need to know about their complicated family situation or relationship issues or whatever. I just need to find them intriguing and someone I can root for.

All of this is to say that I've had an awkwardly difficult time finding mystery books I like outside of Agatha Christie's Poirot books. Excluding thrillers (which are crime fiction but aren't always murder mysteries), the only other recent books I've enjoyed that are structured like mysteries have been Michael Mammay's Planetside series. (I guess technically they aren't murder mysteries, but they are investigations, at least.)

Sigh.

So...I'm a branding nightmare when it comes to writing.

I've written across a varied spectrum of genres: fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, contemporary romance...and I just got an idea for a horror novel.

Lol.

But here's the reason why I write in different genres:

I am usually a themes-driven writer.

Which means I come up with the theme/message of a story first, and then select a genre second as the vehicle for that theme/message.

Nowhere is that more obvious than the story behind Novel #3. When I was reading back over my trunked fragments of novels I attempted and then abandoned before drafting Novel #3, I realized I had worked on 2 or 3 novels that tried to encapsulate the same themes that I finally captured in Novel #3 (immigrant burnout and stigmatization of mental health issues in Asian American communities).

Two of those were contemporary romances, like Novel #3. But one of them...was not. It was a speculative, superhero (!!) romance.

And my horror idea circles the same theme. (Maybe I, as an author, am haunted by certain themes and will keep writing them until I have a traditionally published novel.)

It's tough, because this is, once again, where the art and business of writing clash. Publishers expect you to write in one genre and stick to it for the purposes of brand recognition. But some authors write in a variety of genres because, well, that's where the muse takes us.

My dream is to one day be an author like Silvia Moreno-Garcia or Jesse Q. Sutanto--someone who is allowed to dabble in multiple genres because their name itself has become the brand.

I can dream, at least.

Today's topic was inspired by some tweets I saw lately.

So...writing a story about your own personal experiences is a double-edged sword. I say this as someone who *has* written fiction about my personal experiences. On one hand, I think writers are drawn to telling stories about our personal experiences, especially as a way to process negative events. Like a splinter beneath your skin that you're trying to excise.

On the other hand, writing about your personal experiences can make receiving criticism of those experiences excruciatingly difficult to deal with.

Whenever I think I'd like to be transparent about my inspiration for my stories when they're derived from my experiences, I think about Akemi Dawn Bowman (author of Starfish and other books). She once tweeted that when she explained that the protagonist's experience with her abusive mom came from her own experience with her abusive mom, she received comments from readers who said her mom probably has a mental illness and judging her would be ableist, which caused her to have a mental breakdown.

Sometimes, I regret the publication of my first novel in the sense that it was so personal to me - even if the personal aspects of it were metaphorical rather than literal - and I wonder how I ever had the confidence to put this story in front of other people.

My third novel (which has yet to be published) is literally drawn from many of my life experiences, yet I feel uneasy about sharing that publicly because I'm afraid of people trying to poke and prod me as to how much of the story is autobiographical and how much isn't.

Basically, writing a story about your own personal experiences seems like a thorny issue with no best way to resolve it, other than not reading any reviews or answering any questions about the story.

I previously went on a bit of a rant about how to take critique on your manuscript, based on a prior experience I had with a critique group, but I wanted to go into a bit more detail on that experience and what I might do in a future critique group.

To sum up what happened again: We ended up reading a member's 100k+ word fantasy novel, which I had serious problems with, and the more time I had to spend reading it, the more impatient and blunt I became with my critique, because the novel was seriously flawed on every possible level and I was sick of reading it. Which obviously led to some...Bad Feelings in the group.

I was too polite to voice the fundamental problem I had with the novel, which was:

I didn't know what the author's intention for it was.

And because I didn't know what the purpose/intention for the novel was, it was impossible to explain why it was failing on a structural level (at least, not without sounding really mean).

Here's the thing: In a commercial genre, you always know—very clearly—what the author's intention for the book is. (I mean, unless the author completely failed to write a competent book.) A murder mystery requires a twisty, not-too-predictable, fast-paced murder investigation. A romance requires emotions and feelings and an investment in seeing the two main characters get together, romantically.

The thing with SFF is that those genres describe a setting, but not a plot. A fantasy novel can have any kind of plot—a mystery plot, a political intrigue plot, a military epic, etc.

But the author needs to decide on what kind of plot their SFF book is going to have, and communicate that to the reader.

The author in my critique group, quite honestly, didn't seem to know what their plot was, other than the fact that they wanted not to follow any kind of trope. So the character who was being built up as a the Big Bad got killed off only a few chapters in, and a different character was supposed to be the antagonist.

The thing is, tropes exist for a reason. Reader expectations are an important thing to keep in mind, not just something you can completely subvert because you think it will be a brilliant reversal. When a reader's genre expectations are broken, oftentimes, readers react with unhappiness instead of awe at the author's brilliance. No romance reader wants to read a romance where one of the main characters dies at the end, and no mystery reader wants to read a mystery where the murderer's identity remains unknown at the end.

(One example of successful trope subversion is Knives Out. I can't go into detail because that would entail spoiling the entire murder mystery, but something to take note of is that Knives Out subverts some expectations, but ultimately still fulfills the basic expectations of a murder mystery—i.e. it still reveals the murderer's identity to the audience. And while the subversion purposefully misleads the audience, the audience still always has an idea of where the story is going.)

If a reader doesn't know where a story is going, they're likely to put it down, not keep reading because they want to know what the plot actually is.

I think this is the fundamental misunderstanding of what makes a page-turner. Books capture readers' attention not because readers have no idea what is going to happen, but because readers have an expectation of what will happen, except only in broad strokes, and they're eager to see how the author fills in those details.

Anyway...I was too polite to voice any of these fundamental concerns I had with this book. If I were more honest, I would have told the author outright, "I don't know what your intention is for this story and what you're trying to accomplish with it. Therefore, it's impossible to suggest how to make the story better when I don't know what you're fundamentally even trying to do. And if you don't know what you're trying to do with this book either, you might want to spend some time deciding why you wrote/are writing this and what your authorial vision for it is."

So ignore what I said in my previous post - I think I'm going to take a (short) break from this story. I've realized I'm missing a subplot/red herring that I think will solve my issues with pacing, but I need to brainstorm with my beta, who's currently on vacation (I know, in this pandemic?!). And then, hopefully, once I have that sorted out, my "first draft" will be slightly less of a complete disaster.

Hopefully, also, I will have learned enough from writing this book that I won't be such a complete moron the next time I write a murder mystery.

So, my first two (indie-published) books both had primary romance plots and secondary mystery plots, plus I used to watch a lot of police procedural shows and I read a lot of Agatha Christie books since the pandemic started, so I thought, writing a murder mystery should be no big deal, right?

WRONG.

SUPER WRONG.

For one, I...probably did not do a good job writing mysteries in first two books. (Because my indie publisher didn't do developmental edits.) I reread Novel #2 a few months ago, and while I thought it held up pretty well overall, one thing that was painfully obvious to me in hindsight was that I had no red herrings whatsoever, so the villain was super obvious from ten miles away. I haven't even dared to reread Novel #1 because I'm afraid I'll think it's horrible now, but considering I wrote it before I even touched a single Agatha Christie book, I don't have high hopes that its mystery was all that good.

For another, I probably didn't approach writing this murder mystery in the optimal way.

I'm a discovery writer; extensive outlining at the start of writing a book never works for me. (I mean, I do outline, but my outline is so vague and parts of it gets tossed out the window during the writing process.) But I studied Alexa Donne's thriller writing videos religiously (since thrillers and mysteries are similar), and I know her process is to come up with the motive and/or twist first and discovery-write backwards from there.

I...did not do that. Heh.

I literally came up with the premise first: I wanted to write a fantasy story set in a certain setting, with a certain kind of protagonist, that explores a certain theme, and use noir tropes to do so. From there, I decided on the major characters (without even knowing much about what kind of role they would play)—because my mind tends toward romantic subplots for purposes of tension and angst, so I had to come up with the love interest—and the murder victim, since I knew only one kind of murder victim would lure my protagonist out from semi-hiding.

So I didn't know who the murderer was, I didn't know the motive for the murder, and I didn't even know the cause of death.

Honestly, for murder mysteries in general, I tend to come up with either a murder victim or a setting for the murder first (usually the latter). Maybe it's because I've watched multiple seasons of police procedurals like Elementary and Lucifer, and the way I usually remember episodes/get interested in watching new episodes has to do with the premise of the murder.

But I do see how, if you come up with the motive/twist first and build everything backwards from there, you definitely have complete freedom to design scenes and characters based on whatever works best for the murder mystery.

But I didn't. I had characters first and knew I needed specific character development scenes, and then I had to fit the murder mystery around those scenes.

Oh well.

Another thing that has been hard for me: I was probably too ambitious with this murder mystery. Not only is there the protagonist's murder investigation to deal with, but I also decided that the antagonist was manipulating everything from behind the scenes, and yikes, my story became very complicated very fast. (This is not something I'm going to do again, lol.)

On top of the fact that I'm not a detailed outliner in general, I was so enthusiastic about this story idea—since it had been nearly two years since I drafted a new book, and because this idea struck me as very "pitchable" and sellable to a publisher—that I immediately jumped into drafting without a ton of forethought. And now I'm paying for that by having to slow down during my drafting process to reevaluate, um, major subplots that I didn't come up with the details for ahead of time.

Discovery writing, I've found, is way easier for a romance than for a murder mystery. A romance doesn't require as much foreshadowing and is more about emotions than logic.

My perspective might also be skewed since Novel #3 had a relatively clean first draft, since it was not only a retelling but also a very close retelling of the source material. And it didn't have action scenes (which I love but I generally feel like I suck at).

And before that, Novel #2 was my "just for fun, didn't know it would end up being so well-received" project that I literally had very low expectations for.

The last time I felt like I struggled with making a book match my vision for it was with Novel #1, and that was freaking 6 years ago (I drafted it from 2015-2016).

...

This was supposed to be a "lessons learned from writing a murder mystery" but it devolved into a bunch of rambling thoughts. I'm going to wrap up by trying to go back to my original intention for this post:

When/if I write the sequel to this murder mystery, I'm hopeful that it will be less disastrous because I—hopefully—will have less of a preconceived character framework that I'm trying to shove the murder mystery into. And hopefully I will have learned enough about red herrings and weaving clues from writing this book that it won't be as difficult.

Fingers crossed.

Sometimes, I get very confused as to what is the "right" way to write a trans character when I look at published fantasy books that do what I thought authors weren't supposed to do with respect to trans characters.

For example, in These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong, there is a trans girl named Kathleen. So many people have praised TVD (I was lukewarm about it), but I haven't seen anyone seem to have a problem with the somewhat detailed depiction of the transphobia Kathleen faces throughout the book when Gong herself isn't a trans woman.

Then, I recently finished The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho.

(**Warning for spoilers.**)

The main protagonist of the novella, Tet Sang (who uses he/him pronouns and passes as male), turns out to be a trans man or a trans masc genderqueer character, but it's revealed when another character sees him without his clothes on and proclaims, "You're a woman?"

Which...hey, I thought authors were NOT supposed to link physiology with gender when writing trans characters?

I mean, on one hand, I think it's unfair when authors of color are disproportionately targeted for writing other marginalized identities "poorly," and I'm sure I'm only noticing these issues in Asian-authored books because I don't read that many white-authored fantasy books these days. But both of these books are critically acclaimed, which makes me, someone who's trying to write a genderqueer character in my current novel, confused about what even is good representation anymore.

Sigh.

Today's blog post is inspired by this Twitter thread regarding one Pitch Wars mentee's experience, post-Pitch Wars showcase.

Okay, so...here's the tough thing about being an author, particularly a querying author/author on submission, and that's that it's generally not great to complain about your failures in public.

I mean, yes, there is one obvious con, which is that failure isn't really normalized. Getting published is hard. Querying honestly really sucks, and the experience is one that can make you feel completely alone and isolated.

But the reason why most authors advise you to find a friend group whom you can complain in private to is that...complaining about rejection publicly can often make you look like you're suffering from a case of sour grapes.

The tough, soul-crushing truth is, traditional publishing is not a meritocracy. It's not fair. And it's also extremely subjective and dependent on luck. You could write a brilliant book, but if no agent or publisher wants to take a chance on you, you're out of luck, regardless of how great your book is.

Also...not every book is well written. Honestly. I think that's the major reason why people don't advise complaining about rejections publicly—no one knows how good or bad your book is, and people aren't sympathetic to authors whose books aren't compelling/well written/etc. and who are complaining no one will give them a chance.

So, back to the thread. In my opinion, it's kind of a classic case of "just because social media exists, doesn't mean you should necessarily post every single thought you've ever had to it." On one hand, the OP says getting an agent wasn't their primary goal, but on the other hand, they devote several tweets to justifying why their book is too hard for agents to request, so...it definitely comes off as disingenuous.

Especially since they say things like *being a SF writer in Pitch Wars is hard* and "Genre fiction is a tough sell these days." The second part, in particular, is just flat-out wrong. Genre fiction has always been popular. I can't speak to the competitiveness of the Adult SF market, but if you look at the major Adult SFF publishers like Tor, Orbit, Harper Voyager, etc., you'll see they all publish fantastic Adult SF, so it's clearly not a case of Adult SF being anything close to a dead genre (unlike, say, YA SF, which actually is disfavored).

Then the OP goes on to say that their book, being a space opera, is extremely long and requires tons of worldbuilding, which is why their first three chapters and query letter/synopsis don't adequately reflect the book, and that definitely came off as a red flag to me.

A book being long isn't justification for the opening chapters being slow. To take just one example out of many, RF Kuang's fantastic Poppy War trilogy are massive doorstoppers that take place in a non-Western fantasy world, yet the first book starts with a bang and is compulsively readable.

Worldbuilding isn't a reason to slow down the beginning. One of my favorite SF books is Planetside by Michael Mammay, which doesn't infodump at the beginning but cleverly weaves in worldbuilding throughout the book so that the pacing always remains tight.

The whole reason why beginnings are hard and so incredibly crucial is that they will be the reason an agent, or editor, or general reader will keep reading or decide to put the book down. No one has time to "stick it out" until your book gets good.

Also...if your query letter/synopsis don't accurately reflect your book, something's definitely gone wrong. (Especially your synopsis. What the heck? The synopsis is literally supposed to summarize your book!)

And look, I have strong opinions about OP's thread because I've been there.

I failed querying spectacularly with my first book (which, incidentally, was also Adult SF, like the OP's Pitch Wars book). I thought I had written something brilliant and was confused as to why no agents were requesting additional pages. Clearly, there was a problem with either my query letter or my first pages, but I had to write my query letter that way because of a Big Twist that I didn't want to spoil, and I had to start my book where it did in order for the plot to make sense. Why wouldn't anyone give me a chance???

I still love that first book and consider it the truest book of my heart, but the way I was able to move on was to realize that publishing wasn't a meritocracy, and just because I loved my book didn't mean other people had to if they weren't connecting with my story.

So, in conclusion: If you aren't getting agent requests, maybe it's because there's something actually wrong with your book, not a problem with the market or "arbitrary" agent rules. And I would never say to bottle up your feelings about rejection, but please, please find a private friend group to vent to, because venting publicly can make you come off as petty.