The Flash Moment

To my great delight, I've been completely inundated with queries and proposals since I officially opened to submissions on Monday. Occasionally, I look away from my computer screen and I'm reminded that there's a world happening beyond it--one that isn't composed of letters in a row.

There are queries I know I'll reject after the first sentence. But I read them through anyway--just in case. There are queries that have nothing technically wrong with them that I reject anyway because I can't get excited about them. I've heard from writers all over the globe with stories spanning age groups and genres and oceans. I've been entertained, annoyed, excited, abused, uplifted and bored. I've requested tons of proposals. I've rejected more.

But just now, a proposal stopped me in my tracks. This author was so talented that I heard her voice in the very first short sentence. How inspiring. In everything I read, there is a specific moment when I get a flash of certainty that I'm in good hands, that I'll come away from this just the tiniest bit different--or not. In this proposal, that moment happened in the first sentence. And I just had to smile.

What about you? Have you ever had The Flash Moment?