Errors, mistakes, and more errrors.

Gaaaa.  I wish I were perfect.  On second thought, that's unrealistic.  I wish I weren't expected to be perfect. 

I sent out eight new queries yesterday and this morning.  Seven of them went sailing out from my e-mail address yesterday evening, three of those following a suggestion from my good friends at BookEnds, LLC, to query another (applicable) agent at the same agency after a rejection.  Of the five rejections, three came from agencies where other agents advertised a desire to see fantasy works too, so they got their own line in my spreadsheet.  Four new agencies, then, and three sort-of-re-queries.  Then, this morning, I queried the agent who had advertised that she was opening her window today.  Total queries, then: eight.  Total effective queries: seven, since one was bounced right back as undeliverable (that's OK; it was the agency I felt a little iffy toward anyway due to really funky formatting on their web site).

I didn't send the same query letter I'd sent last time, of course.  My query letter is on version 3 at this point.  Actually, it's on 3.5.  I re-read v3 this morning as I was pasting it into the e-mail and found a problem.  Turns out all seven e-mails I'd sent out last night had requested the agent to reply via my cell (with number included), or e-mail (with address listed), or address (with reference to the address at the top of the letter).  Problem is I'd written the letter to go out via snail mail, and thus the return address was at the top.  When I pasted it into an e-mail, though, I left that stuff out and started the letter with "Dear Ms. Agent:"  *sigh*  Version 3.5, the one that went out today, didn't give the agent the option for responding via mail (since none of them will do it, anyway, without a SASE).

My own fault.  I'd spent a lot of time revising the "pitch" paragraph from v2 to v3, because that's what I believe the agent is most interested in.  I'd taken out what I thought was the last bit of fluff (though I'm sure I'll see more next time I read it), streamlined the sentence structure a bit, and collapsed the two paragraphs into a single one.  I think it's a really good paragraph.  I'd also spent a little bit of time revising the "bio" paragraph, adding a few words about who I am personally, and taking out what I had thought (probably incorrectly) was a decent tongue-in-cheek reference to writing fiction versus the nearly fiction that I sometimes write for work. 

I just didn't really look at the last paragraph.  Why should I?  It's a basic "I look forward to hearing from you at..." missive.  *sigh*

So, v3.5 is now active.  Pobody's nerfect, and all that stuff.