"Not My Genre"

I've got the book out, waiting to hear back from a few agents. But if I get negatives back from them, that'll be it for agents who represent fantasy authors. Carrie has been encouraging me to start submitting to agents who represent mystery as well, but I wasn't comfortable with the idea. I figured at best I'd be wasting my time, and at worst I could get put on some agent's blacklist.

So I called Miss Snark. If you have never read her blog, the anonymous but good hearted Miss Snark doles out advice to published and unpublished about the vagaries of the publishing industry.

I asked her if I should bother querying mystery agents, and here's how she
responded:
Query Kristin Nelson of course.
She does both, and sold a book
like that recently. She takes equeries so you’ll hear back pretty fast I
think.
Then query mystery agents.
Genre blending is the latest thing
(think Charley Huston’s latest just for example).
Go for it.

The problem, of course, being that I already queried Miss Nelson. Twice. It was purely by accident, but it was still due to my own poor record-keeping. I found her name after the first wave of querying, and I thought she was a good enough fit that I should query her as well. Then, I re-discovered her (oy) when I was going through my second wave of queries, and didn't realize the fact until I was filing her rejection the second time and came across her first rejection (double oy).

Haven't decided if I am going to query mystery-representing agents yet. But if I do, I am definitely going to do my homework beforehand to try to find agents that have a passing knowledge of fantasy. And I will definitely be certain that I haven't queried them before.