Aspiring author question.

I always enjoy being asked questions about my journey thus far and I'm always surprised as well. It's not like I've made any kind of an impact. Good grief. Set your goals higher! LOL Anyway, here's the question with identifying information left out.

Dear Ms. Dent,

I have a completed Christian speculative fiction novel, "{name of book}" which I am sending out to agents - could I ask the name of yours, and if s/he is accepting unsolicited queries?

Thanks so much!
{Seminary Professor}


My first suggestion would be to hire a professional editor to have the MS edited. This is what your competition will be doing. And prospective publishers (small traditional houses as you won't get the attention of a large house not even with an agent should you manage to snag one of those)will greatly appreciate the fact that you cared enough to put a little money (make sure editor's quotes are competitive)into your venture. Plus they'll actually look at you should they be interested in the genre or story you've submitted. Rejections will simply be based on whether they're taking new work at the time. I'm speaking from experience here.

You can ask for the name of my agent but you already know it. It's Sue Dent. You can look for an agent if you like, but you'll just be adding to the rejection letters you get and time you'll waste. And agents aren't even publishers.

Also you might call your work something other than Christian Speculative Fiction. This isn't a genre recognized by publishers and there isn't really an audience for stories labeled as such. My work has been called Christian Speculative Fiction but I never called it that. If I had, I'd never have been published unless I self-published that is.

Don't fall into the trap of looking for CBA affiliated Christian agents either, or rather agents who will only show your work to CBA houses. Sadly it's hard to tell them apart from the other agents out there who gladly take work written by Christians and actually call themselves Christian agents as well. Affiliated houses won't even look at your MS if it's called Christian Speculative Fiction. I contacted several Christian agents not understanding that the CBA publishers they submitted to ran from this genre like the plague, when it seemed most of my readers were from the "Christian" market and I was told by every one of them that none of the publishers they submitted to would look at my work.

When I suggested to one of the largest "Christian" agents out there that I felt CBA publishers would take a look at my MS, he still refused to represent me. His words of encouragement were, "what do I know? I turned down Dekker." On a side note, Dekker's work isn't Christian Speculative Fiction either. Like I said, the genre is new and not really a genre at all. It doesn't make sense to call your work this if you're trying to get a publisher to look at you. Dekker wrote very safe CBA oriented work initially. After all, he was and is published by an affiliated house . . . well except for his latest book. That was published under another non-affiliated imprint that to date hasn't published anyone but affiliated publishers. Sort of a non-affiliated, affiliated imprint. I know, right?

For those of you who don't know who Ted Dekker is, perhaps because you don't care anything about the CBA market, he's one of their bigger named authors. Like many affiliated authors his work now shows up in general market bookstores even though the association his publisher belongs to doesn't allow non-affiliated work into their stores without extremely heavy scrutiny if at all. His work is still completely CBA friendly though CBA seems to be content to let him step outside their boundaries every now and again. I suppose so he can pull over potential customers. Who knows?

Bottom line, even if you think your work fits the criteria for Christian Speculative Fiction, don't present it as such to a publisher. General Market publishers (yes I mean non-affiliated Christian houses too) will drop you faster than a hot potato if they pick your query up at all. And CBA affiliated Christian agents and publishers will reject you even faster. There are smaller publishers accepting work called Christian Speculative Fiction but they are few and far between and most are ex-CBA affiliated publishers or editors who still only know how to write for a very closed and exclusive market and well, they know how to work that market.

Good luck though. I wish you well. ;)