Saturday, February 22, 2014

Shiny first post! (And my "how I got my agent" story!)

Hey, it's nice in here (sits down, gets comfortable, tries to think of what should go in a first blog post).  Maybe my "how I got my agent story," complete with gifs (by the way, I've never worked with gifs before, so if they come out wonky, don't be surprised--a computer whiz I'm definitely not :)).

I've read tons of "how I got my agent" posts over the years, and of course I've dreamed of writing my own.  Now that I'm actually doing it, I'm reminded of a line in "Alice in Wonderland" (which I'll quote here, since it gives me a chance to get my thoughts in order):

"'Mine is a long and sad tale!'" said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.

"It is a long tail, certainly," said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; "but why do you call it sad?'"

My tale isn't sad, but it is (fairly) long.  I started writing for publication about seven years ago, drafting a  suspense/science fiction book that thankfully will never see the light of day.  It did, however, make it into the quarterfinals of the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel competition, and, thanks to a pseudo-decent Publisher's Weekly review, made me think it was time to start querying.  Twenty or so form rejects later, and I decided enough was enough.  For that book, anyway.

I ended up writing and completing three other novels, all YA, and I began to notice a querying progression.  On my first (see trunked sci-fi above), no requests.  On the second, several requests, followed by form rejections.  On the third, a pretty decent number of requests, followed by non-form rejections and a couple of revise and resubmits.  The revisions didn't pan out, but they showed me that I was getting closer.

Um, until the fourth book.  Which got no interest whatsoever (hey, it happens) :).

And then we come to number five.

This one was different.  It felt...different.  For one thing, it came a lot faster than the others.  Secondly, it generated interest fairly quickly.  Within a couple of weeks of querying, I had four requests for fulls.  One came back with a quick rejection, so that left three.  And I waited, chewing my nails and feeling kind of like this:


Okay, Shatner was supposed to move.  And you were supposed to see falling rain.  And...well, you get it.

And then, one day I'm at work.  We have firewalls there, so I can't check home e-mail from my office, but I have a contact--my kids.  So I phoned my son, and, just as I was about to hang up, he said, oh-so-casually, "By the way, there's an e-mail for you.  From an agent."

"Okay," I said.  "What does it say?" (This sounds a lot calmer than I actually sounded, because I figured if it had been the dreaded R, he would have come right out and said it).

Instead, he read the e-mail.  It was incredibly detailed and awesome, packed with great suggestions on how to revise the manuscript.  And at the end...she asked if there was a time we could chat.  Which left me feeling like this:


And this:


OMG, I got one to work!!  Anyway, he looks more scared than excited, but...well, you know.

Anyway, so I wrote back and we arranged to speak that Friday.  During the week (which lasted forever) I did my best not to get my hopes up:


Friday came.  I breathed into my paper bag and tried putting on some semblance of dignity (yeah, right--you should have seen me when she called on Skype and I couldn't get the videocam to work).    And she was wonderful.  Lovely, enthusiastic, committed, and full of wonderful revision ideas.  We talked for over an hour.  At the end, I asked the fateful question, "Is this an offer?"

And she said yes!

The rest of the week is a blur.  I sent out e-mails to all the agents who'd requested and the ones I'd queried.  I received several more requests and one more offer from another lovely, enthusiastic and wonderful agent.  I had the weekend to make my decision, and it was incredibly difficult, since they're both so awesome.  Sending out the e-mail to the other agent that Monday was one of the hardest e-mails I'd ever had to write.  But deep down I knew who I would choose.

And now...drumroll...I can announce that I'm represented by the uber-awesome Gemma Cooper of the Jenny Bent Agency!!!!

And now...we dance!















No comments:

Post a Comment