It’ll Be a New TLC Show. We’ll Call It “An Agent Story.”

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Phoebe 64 Comments

It’s a little hard to tell this story in a straight-forward manner. So it might be long. Please bear with me!

I guess it starts a little over a year ago. In March of 2009, I decided that my third manuscript, a contemporary fantasy story called The Stone Sorter, would be the first one I’d query. I wasn’t very far enmeshed in the young adult literary world at the time. I blogged, and wrote reviews of books on goodreads, but I’d only really dipped a finger into the YA blog world. I spent a lot of time feeling like I was on the outside of a pretty exclusive club, and had no idea how to break in—besides getting an agent and becoming wildly successful, that is.

So I was surprised when an agented, soon-to-be-debuting author sent me a note on goodreads about a negative review I’d written. She admired my honesty, and agreed with much of what I’d said. We talked a little bit about her book—which sounded right up my alley, a story about a complicated friendship between two girls—and a little about The Stone Sorter. She offered to look over my query letter, offered me some tweaks, and suggested that I query her agent (though she asked me not to name-drop, since she hadn’t read my book; fair enough, I thought).

I did, but I never got an answer—the query letter seemed to get lost into the email ether. In all, I sent out about thirty queries for The Stone Sorter before giving up—netting a small handful of partial and full requests (four or five? Something like that), all of which led to ultimate rejections.

I started again, with a new manuscript about mermaids that, I’ll admit, I never would have written if I hadn’t been chasing trends. Kids, don’t chase trends! Around the time I started querying this project, I established my critique group the Interrobangs and started to feel more comfortable in the whole YA world thing. A lot of this was because I started to feel more confident as a writer—my crit group has really helped me grow, in ways I’d never really anticipated. Around this time, I started posting teasers of my work, and became a slightly bigger voice in YA reviewing. I was growing in confidence about who I was, feeling like less of an outsider, though that’s something that happened in fits and starts. You don’t really see those changes until you look back at them, I guess.

But querying for my mermaid book, Seas Run Dry, didn’t go that well. I sent out over sixty query letters over the course of three months. Again, I got only a handful of requests, all of which ultimately lead to rejections.

Around this time, I won a copy of my writer friend’s book in a blog giveaway. I read it for review, and was pretty stunned—it was beautifully literary, emotionally affecting. It’s the kind of YA for which I’m just a huge sucker. Though at the time, her agent was only taking snail mail queries (and I generally shy away from snail mail submissions for anything, because I’m lazy), I made a note to try querying her again.

So I sent out my pages, but, sadly, got a form rejection about a week later. Bummer, I thought—but I was pretty used to rejection by this point. I went about my usual routine—working, writing. By this point, I was working on a new project. Sci-fi, my real love—and posting regular teasers, just like I’d always done.

So imagine my surprise when a few days after I received my only snail mail rejection, I got an email from that same agent. She’d read a teaser I’d posted of Daughter of Earth, and it spoke to her. In a brief paragraph, she touched on issues of theme and characterization in an incredibly perceptive way. She sent me an invitation to e-mail a full as soon as my manuscript was ready. I’m not going to lie; it’s the sort of email aspiring writers dream about.

But I had a lot of work to do on my book. I finished it, and with the tireless help of my critique group, revised. That took a while, though—months, actually. And in the meantime, I was dealing with family health problems and my husband’s decision that his grad program wasn’t for him. It was a hard time. I hid in books. And, because I was curious, I read a few more books written by the clients of that agent. Something rare happened: I really respected each one. I’m an incredibly picky reader, as anyone who reads my reviews knows. So it felt like some sort of weird kismet, like serendipity, or something. It felt promising.

Meanwhile, I revised, and revised, and revised. My crit group said I was probably nearly ready, but I was resistant, and a little scared. What if I really wasn’t? What if my book wasn’t good enough? Around this time, that author friend got back in touch. Did I want to trade manuscripts? she asked. I said sure, sent mine away, and devoured hers. A few hours after I sent her my thoughts, she emailed me. She had a few suggestions, but the larger message was this: you’re ready to start querying; send this to my agent ASAP.

So, shaking, a bit terrified, I sent it away the next morning. But because I was nervous, and a bit of a wimp, I sent out eight query letters, too. Just in case, you know; you never know how these things will go, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

To my surprise, over the next three days, I got four full requests, and one partial request. In a weekend, my request rate was as good as it was in three months of querying my last book.

A few days later, the agent emailed me to ask for a phone call. I sat in my window box at home, trying to read and staring desperately at the clock on my phone. Then it rang. I was incredibly nervous at first, but within a few minutes, I realized I had nothing to worry about. First, she offered. Then, she jumped into discussion of suggested edits for my book. And they were all incredibly thoughtful, spot-on. The kind of suggestions where you frown and think, “Why didn’t I think of that?!”

I got off the phone and (after much squee-ing with the Interrobangs), emailed the other agents who still had fulls. I wanted to give them a fair shot—I’d been careful this query round, querying only agents I really highly respected.

But as I waited for their responses, that first agent’s suggestions began to gnaw on my brain. Damn, they were good. And she was nice, and seemed to get me—she was okay with my reviews, familiar with my blog. During this time waiting, I went to BEA, met my author-friend, was overwhelmed by the Javits Center, got lots of free books. And I visited the agent at her agency office. Our conversation there—about books, about my book, about the way she approaches her clients—really just intensified my desire to work with her.

In the end, the other agents who requested my book all ended up bowing out. And while I respect them all incredibly, both professionally, and creatively, I was really ultimately relieved. Because I wanted to work with this agent, to be one of her clients, to let her play with my book and make it the best it can possibly be.

Kismet, you know? Fate. Serendipity.

Anyway, this is entirely too long, and the whole avoiding-naming-names thing is feeling really freakin’ awkward. In case you were wondering, my author-friend (to whom I owe a ton, thank you so much, darling!) is Kirsten Hubbard. And her agent—and mine?—is Michelle Andelman at Regal Literary.

Yaaaaaay!

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