Agent Hunt, round two.

Thanks to scififanatic's encouragement, I've decided I'm going to give the Tower!Guy novel another spin on the Agent-Go-Round. So I screwed my courage to the sticking point and have begun gathering a few more names and doing yet more research.

My biggest frustrations this morning (I've been up since six researching this stuff) are as follows:

1. Urban fantasy is still classified as "fantasy" under the categories at LitMatch and AgentQuery. This is ridiculous. This means agents who accept vampire novels but don't want anything with dragons are classified exactly the same as agents who are interested in your dragons and wish to subscribe to their newsletter. Since I am querying about a straight up fantasy, this is a Big Problem. If I have to see a "OMG Give me Vampires!!111" classified as accepting fantasy one more time, I will scream. Actually, I've already screamed.

Urban fantasy/paranormal romance is big enough to merit it's own tickybox. It would be a lot easier to do this if I didn't have to keep weeding through agents who want the next Anita Blake but wouldn't touch my novel with a twenty foot pole while wearing a hazmat suit.

Everyone wants paranormal, nobody wants fantasy.

On the upside, this means when it comes time to query around for the UF!2girls novel, I'll be spoiled for choice. Or, with my luck, everyone will hate vampires by then and there will be lots of agents saying "No more vampires!" and they'll all want something else I don't have on me at the moment.

2. AgentQuery does *not* keep their stuff up to date. I've found seven different agents who have closed to submissions, aren't with that agency they're listed with, or don't appear to even be in the business anymore, yet are listed as active agents.

3. Nobody is making the distinction between YA and adult commercial genres. There are a lot of agents who will accept fantasy, paranormal, or sci-fi YA but won't touch the adult stuff. Fair enough, but it's a waste of my time and resources to have an agent listed on those search engines as accepting "fantasy" when they actually just accept all genres of YA.

4. Some agents make me wonder how hip they are to the Information Age. They have exactly no web presence, making getting information about them (and more importantly, their submission guidelines) impossible. You couldn't even throw up a blog with post about your guidelines? Twitter? LJ? Nothing?

5. Some agents have impossibly vague submission guidelines. "I want anything with a unique voice" or "I want a great book I can't put down". Geez louise, people. And you wonder why you get thousands of idiotic submissions per day. EVERY WRITER thinks they have a book with a unique voice that can't be put down. So tell us, in no uncertain terms what you do and do not want. Use small words. Bullet point lists with bolded, underlined terms is even better. This is how you do it. I deeply appreciate agents who are kind enough to list, specifically, that they do not want science fiction or fantasy. Or what types they do and do not want. I want to hug those agents. A lot.

Agent hunting continues apace

I spent the better part of today doing intensive research on agents, and I managed to find a handful that I somehow missed on the first go.

I also found some pretty good stuff, so I figured I'd share the wealth.

Agents who rep SF/F thread at AbsoluteWrite.com - You'll have to fast forward to the bottom of the thread to see the most recent entries, but I gleaned a few very good names from there. As always, do your research. Some of the info on the forum may not be accurate, but it's nice to know actually does SF/F, not just who lists it at AgentQuery or LitMatch.

Colleen Lindsay is opening to submissions again. Colleen is a superb agent and a great person. Read the guidelines very carefully, though. She's only opening to certain things, but if you fit the things she's looking for, I would definitely submit.

10 Literary Agents Who Represent SF/F. Most of these are the really biggest and best agents working the field, but it's probably a good starting point for anyone looking for agents. And hey, it was nice to know that I was thorough the first time around (I queried way more than ten, though).

A list of agents who represent at least three living SF/F writers. It's a good list, though there are a few sticking points. Some of the agents are no longer with the agencies listed, some are moving away from SF/F, one or two of agents and/or agency is defunct, if I remember correctly. But it's not a bad starting point if you just need some names and a direction to go in.