Maybe not “the” year, but a year. I have done it before, intensively in 2015-2016, with a YA book I called modern California noir. I learned so much in the 60 or so queries I sent. A short list:

1. A query needs about 10 revisions to get it where it ought to be (mine do). When I got it there last time, I started getting requests.
2. You need a different hat for queries (it’s a marketing hat). I knew and didn’t know this, but one day, I put that hat on and the results were different, and better.
3. The best query won’t sell your book. After some period of time, you’re better off writing something new.*

So I did. I wrote two more books after that year of near-misses. In 2023, I have two completed manuscripts in different genres to query. The first is contemporary and YA. It’s another amateur detective book, making a series where the universe is the same, but the individual books are stand alone.

The 2nd is adult historical fiction, set during the cholera epidemic in Cincinnati in 1849. It’s a fast-paced crime/caper book, kind of Moll Flanders-esque: what shenanigans the lower classes get up to when the rich people move to their country houses to escape the plague. My critique group partners are already suggesting threads for a sequel, but I have a new project in mind.

*The teenage sleuth was so fun to write that back in 2016 my “new” project was another book featuring her. She’s a big girl, with trope-ily absent parents, living in a tough world where people are shitty, or negligent, or criminal. Also, she is, you know, full of wry observations and secret hopes and a nascent, personal moral code.