Neely Tubati-Alexander
Love Buzz
(Women’s fiction/contemporary romance, May, Harper Perennial)
“A chance romantic encounter during a wild night at a Mardi Gras bachelorette party sends straitlaced Serena Khan’s carefully constructed life into chaos as she searches for the guy from Bourbon Street.”
Mesa, Ariz. In 2020… I started writing again after many failed attempts. I had two young kids, my husband and I were both working from home, and it was a lot!… out of a combination of grit and spite, came a few months later. I received the scathing developmental edit on my first book… I had to decide if I could salvage that first book or if I should scrap it and take what I learned and apply it to a new project. I chose the latter.… I finished the draft of in 2.5 months, having started it in mid-May of 2021 and out to beta readers by August. I found my incredible agent Elisabeth Weed at The Book Group from querying.… in December of 2021, I received a revise and resubmit request from an agent.… in early February 2022, she made an offer. I asked for two weeks to notify those who were still reviewing full manuscripts. I emailed those four or five agents… Elisabeth’s agency was one of those. She read [it] in a couple of days and made an offer within those two weeks. I am incredibly grateful to that first agent who invested the time in providing me feedback. I learned quickly that I have to know what my book is, and what it isn’t, and be able to articulate that clearly at all stages. I originally queried with what I came to learn was a not great query letter. So, midway through querying, I rewrote it and send it out again to the same agents. One even requested a full based on the new, improved letter. Waiting a year or more for a book to come out feels like an eternity. But then you see all the behind the scenes required for putting a book into the world and you begin to understand why. Write the shitty first draft and let it be shitty. Striving for perfection on a first draft only results in stagnation. Let it be an unconscious stream and trust the process. My second book, , is… about a video game designer/doomsday planner who agrees to go on a trip with her neighbor to make his girlfriend jealous.
