Success Story Interview - Barbara A. Barnett

An Interview with Barbara A. Barnett (barnett42 on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Emily Keyes of Keyes Agency.

03/11/2025

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
Keepers of the Barren Earth is a YA/adult crossover fantasy novel with a magical Wild West-like setting. After running away from her father’s repressive, patriarchal religious cult, a young woman must expose his lies and embrace the blood magic she’s inherited from him before he kills more innocent people—including the man she loves—to maintain his power and immortality. The idea came when I was reading an article about how Warren Jeffs twisted his idea of Mormonism into a fundamentalist cult, leading fantasy-oriented me to the question, "What if magic was the reason polygamy developed in a culture?"

QT: How long have you been writing?

Barbara A. Barnett:
Since I was eight and my mother, too busy to come watch the adventure I had concocted for my stuffed animals to act out, told me to go write it down. So I did. After that, writing down every weird idea that popped into my head seemed like the natural thing to do.

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
I began writing it in February 2021 and began querying it in May 2024, though a few other projects snuck in there between drafts.

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
Soooo many times, especially while querying. Having a writing community to commiserate with was a huge help. That, and a healthy dose of sheer stubbornness.

QT: Is this your first book?

Barbara A. Barnett:
No, this is the third complete novel I've written. Though there was a pretty significant gap between writing the first one and the second one—I spent those years in between primarily focused on short stories.

QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

Barbara A. Barnett:
I took a creative writing class in both high school and college, though as a speculative fiction writer, I might not have taken the latter one if I'd known we'd be forbidden from writing genre work in it. I attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2007, which was an amazing experience, and I'm a frequent participant in The Never-Ending Odyssey (aka TNEO), an eight-day summer workshop for Odyssey graduates. I attended Taos Toolbox in June 2024, as well as a few other classes and workshops here and there.

QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?

Barbara A. Barnett:
In a normal week, I usually write every day, even if it's only for 15 minutes. The ideal target for me is 2-4 hours a day, though it varies depending on my schedule.

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
I was about a quarter of the way into Keepers of the Barren Earth when I realized I needed to make some significant changes, so I went back to the beginning and revised the first act before finishing the rest. So that was sort of draft 1.5. There were two more major rounds of revision after that: the second draft that I eventually sent out to beta readers, then the third draft that incorporated their feedback. And now there will be another round of revisions with my agent!

QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

Barbara A. Barnett:
Yes, I have several writer friends who have been awesome enough to offer feedback on this and other projects.

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
Team Outline. I can write short stories without an outline, but when I tried writing my second novel without one, it got real messy real fast. I had to stop, outline, and revise the beginning before I could finish the rest. Keepers of the Barren Earth was my first time outlining a novel using the Snowflake Method, which works really well for me. I've outlined two more novels that way since.

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
I began querying this one in May 2024 and got my agent offer in February 2025. For the novel before this, I started querying in June 2020 and queried for a little over a year before giving up on it. And for my first novel, I spent about six months querying, though that was around 2005-2006, so the querying landscape was way different than it is now. Some of those queries were sent by snail mail!

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
83 queries for this one, 123 queries for the novel before that, and only 50 queries for the first novel.

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
I write fantasy and horror, so first I looked for agents who represent both of those genres. Because there are so many sub-genres within those, the next step was narrowing it down to agents who represent the types of fantasy and horror I write. Sometimes it's hard to tell, so when in doubt, I put them on the list.

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
Only if I had something non-generic to say, like we'd met at a conference or they had nice things to say about the last novel I queried or I thought the novel hit on something specific in their manuscript wishlist.

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

Barbara A. Barnett:
Don't get too caught up in obsessing over stats and comparing your journey to others. Some days it feels like there's nothing but "I got eight gazillion agent offers after only two weeks of querying my very first novel" success stories out there. But for some of us, it takes a while to hit the right agent at the right time. Instead of hyperfocusing on the project you're querying, I think it's better to start a new one and do things to improve your craft while you're waiting for agents to respond.

Query Letter:

Keepers of the Barren Earth is a 100,000-word YA/adult crossover fantasy novel that combines the fantastical Wild West setting of Charlotte Nicole Davis’s The Good Luck Girls with the magic, romance, and religious themes of Hannah Whitten’s The Foxglove King.

Nineteen-year-old Cambrie Oaks wants nothing more than to quietly fit in with the other magicbearers. Like them, she was given no choice about sacrificing her fertility to make the arid land livable. But being the favorite daughter of Barren Water’s immortal prophet has earned her resentment instead of acceptance, and a forbidden attraction is testing her commitment to a magicbearer’s chastity. Still, Cambrie is determined to help Father protect their isolated compound from the sinful world of the outsiders—until she learns his immortality is not the divine gift he claims it is.

After discovering the rare blood magic that sustains Father’s longevity—and worse, that she’s inherited this lethal power to drain a person’s life force—Cambrie flees the compound, into a world that’s nothing like the barbaric wasteland Father described. With the help of a young itinerant minister named Martin, Cambrie forges a new identity and conceals her blood magic from those who would see her hanged for it. But she can’t avoid blood forever—not when she’s finally found acceptance at a medical clinic, where she tends to men injured at the silver mines from which Father profits. To keep herself from hurting anyone, Cambrie enlists Martin’s help researching the origins of her power. Yet the more secrets she uncovers—and the more she finds herself falling for Martin despite his mysterious past—the harder it becomes to justify her own.

Worse, Father has more connections to the outside world than his followers realize, and he’ll leverage every last one of them to bring Cambrie home, even if it means killing the people she loves. If she’s ever going to be truly free of Father and his lies, Cambrie will need to sacrifice the ordinary life she’s always wanted and embrace the truth of who she is, power and all.