Julie Eshbaugh recently signed with agent Natalie Fischer of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. Thank you Julie for agreeing to this interview, and good luck with your book.

QueryTracker: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you’ve found representation? What inspired you to write it?

Julie Eshbaugh: The book is currently titled FIREFLY, and it's a YA sci-fi romance. The inspiration for the story goes back years. There's a song that's always been one of my favorites, and in it a boy tells the story of how much he loves a certain girl, even though he knows he can't stay with her any longer. Obligations elsewhere are taking him away. I've daydreamed about those characters for years. FIREFLY is my version of their story.



QT: How long have you been writing?

JE: I've been engaged in various types of writing for over ten years. I started when I was in college. Back then I mainly wrote short stories.



QT: How long have you been working on this book?

JE: I started conceptualizing this book in May of 2009. I spent about seven months from first outline to first query.



QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?

JE: I don't think I ever felt like giving up on this book. The thing that saw me through was my love of the characters and my passion for their story. I have always been the type to agonize over every new idea, because I realize that if I am not one hundred percent in love with it, I will never see it all the way through. When I settled on this concept, I was so excited because I knew the passion was there.



QT: Is this your first book?

JE: FIREFLY is actually my third novel. The first one made it to the query stage, but I quit too early; I just didn't love that book enough to carry it all the way through. My second novel is currently incomplete, but I may go back to it someday.



QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

JE: I took a fair amount of creative writing courses in college, focusing mainly on short stories and poetry. Those courses helped me learn to edit and polish my writing.



QT: Do you follow a writing "routine" or schedule?

JE: My only "routine" is to write every day. I often would set daily goals while I was completing the first draft, (for instance, I might try to finish two thousand words in one day,) but if I fell short of the goal, I didn't waste time obsessing over it. Some days I wrote five hundred words; some days I wrote five thousand. As long as I added to the draft every day, I was satisfied.



QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?

JE: I did one major re-write after the first draft was completed. After that, I re-read and revised the manuscript many times! The current version of the manuscript contains the header "draft five."



QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

JE: Yes, I did have beta readers. Through writing websites, I connected with two young women whose ages fit into my target audience, and they gave me extremely helpful feedback. Members of my family also read for me, but of course, their feedback is going to be more subjective.



QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?

JE: I outline extensively. However, even before I create the outline, I do a lot of "background writing." For FIREFLY, I typed about one hundred pages of family histories, character analyses, first-person narratives by the various characters about how they felt about the major issues that had direct bearing on the story - all before typing the book's title on the first page of the first draft.



QT: How long have you been querying for this book?

JE: About three-and-a-half months separated first query from first offer. I eventually received two offers of representation for FIREFLY, and chose Natalie Fischer of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency because she was extremely enthusiastic about the manuscript from the very beginning.



QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?

JE: I sent out exactly 26 query letters for FIREFLY.



QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?

JE: I had only two criteria - the agent had to represent young adult, and the agent had to be affiliated with a reputable agency.



QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?

JE: I did tailor most queries to the agent. I read the bio of every agent I queried on the agency's website, and often I would also read outside interviews that I found on the web, and I based my letter on the information I found there.



QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?

JE: My most basic piece of advice would be to know your manuscript and to know why, out of all the manuscripts out there, yours deserves to be published. I'd also encourage writers seeking agents to know how to describe their book in one sentence, in a few paragraphs, and in several pages. Each description should be equally compelling. Of course, I'd recommend that every writer seeking an agent become a premium member of QueryTracker.net. I can't overstate the value I got from the features on the site.



QT: Would you be willing to share your query with us?

JE: I'd rather not provide the entire query letter since, in my opinion, it gives away too much of the story. Here is the first half. I hope it's enough to give you a feel for the book:

You can't miss a boy if he takes your memories with him when he leaves.

Cole Thomas, a seventeen-year-old son of nobility on the planet Blue, travels with his family to Earth every summer, where they pose as Earthlings and pass the season in their beachside mansion in the Hamptons. Cole looks forward to the trip more and more each year, because each visit brings him back to Mary Wynde, the Earthling girl whose family lives next door. But for Mary, every summer with Cole is the first. When the Thomas family returns to Blue each fall, they take all Earthling memories of themselves with them.

FIREFLY is about first love between an Earthling girl and the alien-boy-next-door - a love apparently doomed by duty, since this autumn Cole must return to Blue to marry the daughter of a rival ruling family. The citizens of Blue anxiously await this arranged marriage, in hopes that it will bring long-awaited peace to their war-torn world...

You can read more about FIREFLY and its path to publication at julieeshbaugh.livejournal.com.