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!
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