My Darling Fox,

I wore actual day walker pants for the first time in this feral year of 2025. Yes, that’s right, due to surgery, recovery, and swelling, I’ve only worn “vata de casa” and sweatpants. Shout out to my fiance for bending the knee to my thievery. And I bring up my bottom situation because… On the second day of wearing pants, an agent asked for my full manuscript. And if you’re one of my beloved civilian readers, that’s a big deal! See, the more common response from an agent to a query letter is some kind of kind rejection. The next is a partial manuscript request, they want to see a bit of it before seeing all of it. And the rarer response is a full manuscript request, which is a confirmation they like the idea, and now they want to see the whole execution.

For a fledgling author like me just spreading her wings in the industry for the first time, it’s a big big deal.

So what’s the lesson I learned? Wear pants and gain success! Okay, I jest. But I wanted to point out the ravine sized jump in MEANING that I had created. Creatives have this uncanny ability to derive meaning from anything. Even my leftover ramen from last night; continued abundance am I right? A penny on the floor; I’m destined for riches! But more often than not, our brains derive NEGATIVE meaning from the arbitrary happenings of life.

Now, let me tell you about the roller coaster of emotion that this weekend was.

Friday I had a query letter critique and the critique was lovingly brutal on my ability to write a query letter. But the meaning I derived from that was that my novel writing was weak. Even though they didn’t read my novel. All they read was a letter summarizing a huge book into two paragraphs. Yet I chose to derive whatever meaning from it than what was actually meant. After crying for an hour in my hotel room, I reminded myself of good ole fashioned logic and was able to calm down and start working on my new query.

And naturally, as a creative, I decided to assign a new meaning to all of this! Why? Well what else was I going to do after hearing from so many different sources how I should do with my query. If I was going to get rejected on things, I might as well be myself in the process. So I started feeling like this all meant I was just supposed to just do me. So I did! I rewrote my query letter more as myself and even kept my inspirations honest in the comp section aaaaaaand…. That embracing of self got me a full manuscript request with an amazing agent the very next day!!!

Here’s the wild part, eventually at the mixer that night I found the agent that gave me my critique and she admitted that mine was the best query she and the editor had read all day! The absolutely incorrect meaning I attached to the critique, wrecked my brain, but it was necessary so I could fully embrace my authenticity. And while some people would say that finding meaning in things causes stress and harm and bad things, I actually disagree. Had I not felt that way, I would not have made my query even stronger. Which means I would not have gotten the full manuscript request.

So because not all old habits need to die, my attempt at deciphering the meaning of all this: Maybe we’re meant to hold onto negative meanings of things, just like the characters we writers create. And maybe those negative meanings lead us on epic adventures that change us and bring in that lighter more positive meaning.

And in terms of my fantasy world which is deeply based in yin (moon) and yang (sun)… “We can neither embrace the light, nor the shadow, for to embrace only one would mean the death of the soul. We cannot gaze at the sun without stretching our shadow, and we cannot perceive the moon, without the sun shining upon it. This truth the world living around us, and the world breathing inside of us.”

Till next month my darling foxies! For now, let’s celebrate the wonderful news 😊

-AM

P.S. I’m back to no nightwalker pants, join me in the comfort zone!

Book Club

It's time folks... I'm going to read Fourth Wing. One of my dear sisters is a big fan and I can no longer have her censor herself for spoiler free speak.

Want to read it together?

Quote of the Month

This month's quote is by our favorite forgetful fish! It very much embodies what the recovery process after painkillers has been like.

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Here is one of my celebratory mugs I drink from when it's time to do some celebrating! I hope to drink out of this one daily with the amount of work I'll be getting done :D