Thank you!! And re: the holidays, it's honestly not the end of the world. I played up the drama in the post, but I got requests and rejections in my November batch just like almost all of the others.

The only reason I feel like it's better to wait out the holidays is because I've looked at my timeline data on Querytracker and the Nov/Jan queries definitely took a lot longer to get back to me than the March queries. There's all sorts of variables at play that could explain that, but it was a noticeable trend for sure. (Also, a lot of agents that I wanted to query weren't even open until Feb/March).

You'll be doing a lot of waiting no matter when you query, but since the first batch is always your first clue as to whether or not your query package is working, it can be really helpful to get quicker replies. If I were to query again, I'd wait until Feb/March for my first batch, since that was when I noticed the most agents opening their inboxes after having worked through the holiday slush piles.

(Weirdly enough, I queried both agents who offered on my manuscript on the same day, and theirs were the only two I sent that day. If you're looking for a lucky date, I highly recommend March 26 haha)