June was a total gut-punch.

I got a lot of positive feedback from the #WriteMentor mentors, but I was ultimately passed over. For the most part, the feedback suggested that I was nearly where I needed to be to get published, but it still stung to watch others go on to work with established authors, while I was left behind (sort of…see below).

#QueryKombat was a similar disaster. My query package was destroyed in the first round, losing 1-6. The feedback there was also good, but infuriating. While my query letter needed work (it always does), no one complained about the quality of the first 250 words of the story.

Those back-to-back losses were hard to swallow even though a lot of good came out of them!

One of the mentors from #WriteMentor – Chris Billingsley – reached out to help me with my query letter. We worked together for a few weeks to streamline a not-so-great letter into something I’m truly proud of.

While I’ve always known what I’m supposed to put into a query, I’ve always struggled to do so. But with Chris’ help, I’m very happy with what I was able to achieve. And the lessons I carried forward from interacting with him (you can check out his website here).

But the rest of the month hasn’t been as kind.

Between work, revising a cyberpunk novel from third to first person, and querying Aiko’s Dive, I was stretched pretty thin. And I still am if I’m being perfectly honest.

With that being said, I let the updates slip (and, again, I’m sorry about that). July feels like it’s going to be a bit more mellow, so I’m hoping time to do all the little things I want becomes available.

Until then, keep an eye out for updates about Aiko’s Dive. I’ve gotten a few bites so far and keep my fingers crossed every time I hit the “send” button in hopes of a few more.