Overcast day in Coba. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
I’m currently in that cumbersome stage between starting the next book while needing to find a home for the last one. My experience with Pitch Slam at the Writer’s Digest Conference was a partial success. During the pitch itself, I had five out of five requests for more information. Of those, I’ve heard back from three, each of which gave me thoughtful and encouraging it’s-not-you-it’s-me rejections (yep, that really is a thing). And honestly, although I would of course love to have found my perfect match at the conference and thereby bypass the painful awkwardness of cold-querying, I’m actually grateful for the practice and to those who passed because they knew the book wasn’t a good fit for them. I’m especially grateful to the three who took the time to tell me why, while also encouraging me to keep querying. The whole experience has helped me reevaluate who I need to approach and given me a basic letter that I am now going back and revising as I research agents.
At the moment, I’m finding the greatest challenge to be efficiently shifting between the headspaces of my last book, which is set in an environment deeply indebted to the Yucatán; my still-formulating next book, which is set on the same world but on a different continent, in a different time, and in a very different culture; and the book I’m currently editing for Drum Tower Press, which is set in Ming Dynasty China. The effect reminds me of the temporary paralysis I felt as a kid when I was tasked with cleaning my room and had no idea where to start. But now, as then, there is no way out but through.
To help me with these shifts, I’m revisiting my pictures of the places that inspired the book I need to query, and thought I would share a few of them here.
Loltun cave. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
Monkeys in Calakmul. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
Ruins of tropical Kohunlich. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
Temple of the Masks, Kohunlich. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
Skull in the ballcourt of Coba. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
Anole at Becán. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
Trees at Labna. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
Long-nosed masks at Xlapak. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.
El Castillo at Chichén Itzá. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.