How I Got My Agent

Hello! If you’re reading this, you’re presumably either looking for information on querying and all that it entails, or you’re my friend here to giggle at my pain and suffering. If you identify with the latter, watch your back. If you identify with the former, godspeed soldier.

Seriously. Querying is not a journey for the faint of heart, and not to play querying Olympics, but I feel as if mine was especially heinous, considering the unprovoked agent violence, a devastating small press offer, and 11 months of inbox-checking purgatory. Though, considering the state of the industry at present, I wouldn’t be shocked at all to hear of an even more nail-biting, spine-chilling querying journey. The trenches are indeed treacherous.

Of course, I wouldn’t take any of it back and I’m perfectly content with every decision I made during this process, as it led me to my wonderful agent who adores my writing and my characters and was the best match for me in every conceivable way.

I do want to emphasize that my story is not reflective of that of the majority of authors, and I would advise that you read more HIGMA posts aside from mine to curate an accurate picture of what you’re getting yourself into when you press send on that first query. I received an offer for the first manuscript I ever wrote and queried, and I was in the trenches for 11 months. I did not revise either of my manuscripts even once after I started querying, and I did not listen to any personalized rejections I received from agents. Of the dozens of other posts I’ve read, it seems as if most authors receive offers on their 2nd or 3rd manuscripts after spending maybe 2-3 years querying. Don’t quote me on that, though.

And while my querying stats are only average, I understand that they might be discouraging to other querying authors, so I’ll be putting them at the very end of this post for anyone interested in my numbers.

Without further ado, let’s get started. Warning: this post is going to be long as shit. Grab a snack.

baby’s First Books

I wrote my first book when I was around six or seven years old. A silly thing about kittens that lived inside Big Ben. It was probably awful, but I can’t quite remember anything aside from the architectural liberties I took in installing a slide inside the clock for the kittens to play on (pity I can’t do math, I would have made a great engineer). Even then, I wanted to be an author, wanted to write books forever.

I wrote more books. A Diary of a Wimpy Kid-esque novel of journal entries from a dog, a book about the political affairs of mermaids I wrote during writing time in 4th grade, and a truly awful crime thriller I wrote about 50k words of when I was 13. After all of that, I retired to writing fan-fiction, as every great writer that has come before me. Some of it is still up on both AO3 and Wattpad, but you’ll never find it and I’ll never tell.

At some point, I stopped telling people I wanted to be an author when I grew up, because it was something that felt unattainable, just as wishful as wanting to be the next Hannah Montana or winning American Idol. I stopped writing books because I wholeheartedly believed it was a pointless endeavor, and that nothing would ever come of it.

That didn’t mean I didn’t still love writing. Writing is the only thing that has ever made sense, the one thing that comes completely naturally to me. My sisters are artists (painters and illustrators), and I don’t know where the hell they got that talent gene from, because it missed me entirely. And as I stated before, I’m so horrible at math that it’s laughable. I once made an 8 out of 100 on a pre-calculus quiz in high school. Pre-AP Chemistry was my villain origin story. But I was the person that every friend and teammate came to when they needed help on their college admissions essays or their research papers proofread.

Like, I was good. Too bad I couldn’t figure out how to make this into a career. Unless…?

Enter Stage Left: The Pandemic

That’s right, my very first completed, revised manuscript is a pandemic baby. I had just been laid off from both of my retail jobs, and I moved out of my apartment and back into my parents’ house. The first couple of months were spent binging Bones, doing multiple 2000 piece puzzles at the kitchen table, and tearing through my TBR. I was halfway through my degree, and my professors weren’t well-versed in online schooling, so my classes had never been easier. I finally had time to sit down and freak the fuck out about my future. I wasn’t interested in my major anymore, and finding a job I enjoyed that would hire me with just a BA in Psychology would be near impossible. I well and truly began to spiral.

And during that spiral, a thought came to me. See, I was an active participant on Book Twitter, which sometimes happens to merge with Writer Twitter in the TCU (Twitter Cinematic Universe). So many of my friends were posting moodboards of their WIPs and links to things they’d written on Wattpad and AO3, and aside from a couple of half-baked fanfics, I didn’t have much to show for my skillset. Suddenly, being an author didn’t seem so unattainable. It was there, right within reach.

So, I did it. I sat down and started writing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a plotter, not a pantser. Now. But back then, I hit the keyboard with a wish a dream, and hoped for the best.

And thus, A LESSON IN FALLING was born. My F/F adult bodyguard romance between a wealthy, luxury fashion designer and her ex-boxer bodyguard. A LESSON IN FALLING took two years to for me to write and revise, as I eventually got another job, and went back to a few in-person classes the following semesters. During this time, I was fully immersed in Writer Twitter, and had made so many extremely talented friends. It’s one of the best online spaces I’ve ever known, and I don’t think I would have had the motivation to write my book without it. With my friends’ encouragement, I finished the manuscript in January 2022, a month after I graduated college, then revised it relentlessly for about 2 months, with 4 drafts to show for it.

Let’s get something straight. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I’ve never read a craft book, and I wrote how I’d been taught in school, as well as how I’d learned from being a voracious reader for years. I think if you know the basics of writing and grammar, and even vaguely understand the structure of storytelling (from any culture, not just Western storytelling), that you can write a book! Basically, I wrote A LESSON IN FALLING as a completely unapologetic and self-serving story that I would want to read.

And once I’d finished up revisions, there was only one thing left to do.

Into the Trenches

I sent my very first query on March 17, 2022.

Now, I didn’t know much about querying. I’d gotten help on my query letter from some agented friends of mine, and had multiple people proofread my synopsis and opening pages. I’d learned the industry standards from numerous websites and blog posts. Of course, some were outdated, as querying culture shifts and changes on what seems like a monthly basis.

Here’s what I did know: Send in batches. Keep a spreadsheet. Use unique but fitting comp titles. Make sure you state the inciting incident, action, and stakes (MOST IMPORTANT) in your pitch. Customize your query letter based on each agent’s personal MSWL. Be confident. Be gracious.

So, that’s what I did. I sent my first batch of queries to 16 agents who represented adult romance (specifically queer adult romance) I’d found through Twitter and ManuscriptWishlist.com. And in less than 24 hours I had my first ever query response.

A full request.

To say I freaked out would be an understatement. I think I almost blacked out, and I was surely seconds away from going into cardiac arrest. But, I sent in the full manuscript almost immediately. God, I was so excited. And that excitement was only exacerbated as I received another full request the next day. I was two for two. The feeling was so unreal. I spent all day researching these agents and who they represented and telling everyone I knew that [insert author]’s agent liked my opening pages.

Unfortunately, these requests set an unrealistic precedent for the next couple of months. Because that’s when the rejections started rolling in. Most of them were form rejections, but some were personalized, and I’m going to be frank: I didn’t revise anything these rejections told me to. Of course, most of the advice was to get rid of my prologue, and I’m sorry Publishing Gods, but you will have to pry my prologues from my cold, dead hands. I do wonder how many more full requests I would have gotten if I’d listened, though.

My first full rejection came around the end of April from my third full request. This agent was…wow. She had negotiated a seven-figure deal for one of her big-name authors for an F/F book, had a query reply rate of 3.5% and she wanted to read my manuscript? I was absolutely floored. This rejection hit the hardest out of all of them, because I felt so close. She and her assistant read it together, and the e-mail said, and I quote, “She truly didn’t have anything negative to say about the piece; it comes down to not being able to find a space for the story you’re telling with the other titles she has upcoming. We both feel pretty positive that you’ll be able to find someone to champion this story the way it deserves and can’t wait to see where this goes!”

So, that felt shitty, not having any tangible reason for a rejection from one of the coolest agents I’d queried so far.

My solution? Send more queries. And some more. And a little sprinkle of more. I did get a few more full and partial requests in the following months, and a lot of them were from pitch events.

Pitch Events, I owe you my life

Right before I started querying, #PitMad was cancelled. This was devastating, as my goal for revisions was to finish on time and participate in my first #PitMad.

But, never mind that. There were plenty more I could participate in, and #LGBTNPit ended up being my first event. I made a total of 3 pitches, and received 3 agent likes and two editor likes across all pitches. I sent them all immediately, and got a partial request the same day. Unfortunately, the other two resulted in form rejections, but I was still getting full requests from my cold queries, so I wasn’t too heartbroken over it.

I participated in #SmoochPit in May, with 3 pitches that garnered a total of 1 agent like and 1 editor like. Not my best results, I’ll say. I also pitched in #DVPit in August with 4 pitches that received a total of 3 agent likes. One of which was from an agent that I’d already sent a query to, but hadn’t heard back from yet. I sent her a message on QueryManager, and she promptly requested the full manuscript. I sent it right away, knowing that this agent and her agency was a romance powerhouse (remember this).

Suffice to say, I owe quite a bit of my querying success to pitch events. I have more to say on pitch events and their outcomes, which I’ll touch on a bit further in my journey.

Unprovoked Agent Violence

As I stated before, I ensured my query letter was confident and gracious. Nothing that would get me subtweeted or spoken about in whisper networks like some I’d heard about. And yet, I still found myself in tough, and downright brutal situations that really, honestly, sucked.

The first instance came in June, when I opened a query rejection that had landed in my inbox. Obviously, I won’t be naming names, but to not include this part of my querying journey, when it’s one of the first things to come to mind, would be untruthful. I’ve excluded most of the rejection, as it was again advising that I cut out my prologue, and other quite normal statements for a personalized rejection that I wouldn’t have thought twice about if it weren’t for this:

I don’t think my jaw has ever dropped faster than when I read this. Like, who says that? For context, Holland is a wealthy, no-nonsense fashion designer of a luxury brand in the same vein as Gucci or Versace. In the opening pages of A LESSON IN FALLING, she chastises an employee for not having an assignment completed on time. Nothing that would constitute calling her a bitch in what is meant to be a formal, professional line of communication. Sure, the agent was focused on sci-fi manuscripts, and didn’t really represent romance; I’d queried her under the LGBTQ genre thinking it’d be okay, and the worst that would happen was that I’d get a form rejection. Hoo boy, I wish.

I did end up tweeting about this, and it got much more attention than I’d expected. So much that the agent ended up seeing it, and sent me a DM in which the first sentence was, “I am so so sorry you felt that way about the rejection I sent.” This just didn’t sit right with me. I was advised against it, but I sent a lengthy message as to why a rejection like this might be an afterthought to an agent, but will stick with the author forever. I’m just glad this rejection went to me, as I have quite thick skin, and not to someone that would have been absolutely devastated about it.

The following month, I had a full manuscript out with an agent that seemed really cool, and I was so excited to hear back from her. Now, I’ll never have confirmation that this was about my book, but I’m almost fairly certain that it was. The agent that had my manuscript tweeted late one night:

“A book I was so excited to read is so boring and truly what a huge bummer.“

I saw it, and sent the Tweet to my friend, Kayla, who was also stuck in the trenches with me:

Lo and behold, bright and early at 8AM the next morning:

“Thank you for sharing A LESSON IN FALLING. I love the idea of a female bodyguard and think the concept is really smart. That said, the writing didn’t feel as true to life as I might have hoped. Of course this is just my opinion and another agent might feel differently. I wish you all the best with your work.”

Woof. I still remember the way the air deflated from my lungs like a balloon. Because that’s really just a nice way of saying that my writing was boring. Maybe that Tweet wasn’t about me, but it sure did feel like it, and it honestly still does.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I was experiencing these things that didn’t seem like a normal part of querying. Maybe I was just being overanalytical because I had so much at stake, and I had never wanted anything so badly in my life, but holy shit did it feel personal.

I didn’t let these instances keep me down. Instead, I kept busy and tried to forget about it.

Busy Bee

The most essential piece of advice I have for first-time query-ers is to write something else, anything else while querying your novel. If you don’t, checking QueryTracker and Twitter and your inbox will drive you absolutely mad. The best decision I ever made was to write my second book like my ass was on fire, so that it would be ready to query if I unfortunately had to shelve A LESSON IN FALLING.

SUGAR & SPICE, my candy shop rom-com reimagination of You’ve Got Mail, was so easy to write. I love that goddamn book with everything in me. It is honestly the book of my heart. I’m so proud of the way I’ve honed my craft since I first set pen to paper in 2020. Truthfully, I’d been on the edge of my seat, waiting to finish revisions for A LESSON IN FALLING so I could start outlining and drafting SUGAR & SPICE. These characters, Harley and Ophelia, truly just flowed out of me. They’re voice-y and fun and completely original, and I had a BLAST writing their story. It was one of the only things distracting me from the growing pile of rejections in my inbox.

I stated before that it took me two years to draft A LESSON IN FALLING. SUGAR & SPICE only took me 8 months. Some of that can be attributed to the fact that I was no longer in school, and my current job was flexible enough that I had the time and energy to write as freely as I wanted. But really, I had grown more comfortable with my abilities, and I was riding confidence from compliments received on Twitter, and from full manuscript requests.

Everything was going great.

For now.

An Offer (No, not the offer)

July 14, 2022. Almost 4 months since I started querying, and the day before my 22nd birthday, I received an e-mail.

This was from an editor at a small press I had submitted to just two weeks before in my desperation. Around the end of June, with so many unanswered full and partial requests that I felt wouldn’t amount to anything, I admittedly began to panic that I wasn’t going to find a home for A LESSON IN FALLING. So, I did what any querying writer would do and sent panic queries. So. Many. Panic queries.

This was one of them.

But, the tides were turning! They wanted to speak to me! Surely, nudging all the agents that had my full manuscript (16 agents) with an offer of publication would result in an offer of representation from one of them! So, on that Thursday, I set up the call for the following Monday, and sent nudges to every agent with my full and my query.

And the rejections were swift. Of course, I got two full requests from agents that only had my query, but those with the full manuscript were rejecting so quickly that I got whiplash. By Monday, I only had about 5 agents left with my full manuscript. I was hardly sleeping, and I couldn’t focus on anything that wasn’t this situation I’d gotten myself into.

I was still excited, though. Even if I didn’t have an agent, I was going to have an offer! My book would have a home! That night, I sat down 5 minutes before my call was scheduled, and I waited. And waited. And waited some more until it was clear that this editor had missed our meeting.

Red flag number one.

I sent them a questioning message, and worried about it endlessly for the next 24 hours. I thought maybe they’d been confused when we set up a time, and believed we were supposed to meet on Tuesday. Again, I waited. The call didn’t come at the time we’d scheduled on Tuesday either, and there was no reply to my message, so I accepted the fact that something was amiss, and I might not have an offer at all. Then, the call came, at 7PM on Tuesday. So, matter which day they thought we’d scheduled the call for, it was still two hours late.

From the first few minutes on the call, I realized there was an 85% chance I would not be accepting this offer. I had prepared a list of questions, and the editor did not know the answer to 2-3 of them. Red flag number two.

And, red flag number three: the editor told me that if I signed a deal with them, part of the editing process would consist of making the singular sex scene in the manuscript closed door.

This might not have been a deal breaker if I was writing any other story, but A LESSON IN FALLING is an unapologetically queer adult romance. The reason I wrote it was to add one more sexy, steamy F/F romance to bookshelves, which I couldn’t very well do if the one sex scene was cut from the book. That, and I wouldn’t know how the hell to market a ‘clean’ adult romance book in this era of spicy rom-coms, and I wouldn’t want to anyways. I was irritated that they hadn’t marked that tidbit of information in their submission guidelines, because it would have saved me a lot of time and stress, and maybe a few rejections.

I got off of that call knowing fully well I wouldn’t be taking the offer, but I still wanted to hear back from the other agents that had yet to respond. I asked the ones that had rejected due to time constraints if they’d reconsider since I would be declining the offer, and some did! And some didn’t.

By the end of it, after I sent the e-mail declining the small press offer, I only had about 3 agents still considering my full manuscript. If you’re keeping track, there were 16 when I sent out my nudges.

I truly felt that I was right back where I started four months prior. And, damn, did that suck.

Keep on Keeping On

I tried not to let this setback get to me, so I dove right back in to SUGAR & SPICE. As I mentioned, I also participated in #DVPit in August (aha, don’t forget!), and sent so many cold queries it’s embarrassing. If you’re interested in how many queries I sent for A LESSON IN FALLING (a completely inadvisable number, do not follow my dumbass lead), remember to check my statistics at the end of this post.

I was checking my inbox at least every 3 minutes. I needed desperately to touch some grass.

I got a few more full requests after #DVPit, and some full rejections as well. Most of these responses were taking months to come. It was starting to all feel a bit hopeless, even with 4 full manuscripts still out for A LESSON IN FALLING. The unfortunate conclusion that I was probably going to have to shelve this book scared the hell out of me. I didn’t want to shelve it; even the thought of doing so was heartbreaking. Even if it was my first book, and I knew from the beginning it was a strong possibility, I loved this book and my characters. I didn’t want to see them lost to Google Docs and sad Twitter snippets forever.

So, I held out a miniscule amount of hope for one of the 4 agents with my full to offer, but I didn’t let myself get too attached to the likelihood of it.

Instead, I did something very stupid.

Querying: the sequel

Before I tell you any of this, do not do what I did. I’m dumb as shit and this is not how I got my agent. I repeat, do not follow my example.

In early November, I was down to 3 full manuscripts still out, and it had been 4 months since my shitty small press offer fiasco. I was over it, though, and I was so close to finishing the first draft of SUGAR & SPICE. My goal had been to have it done by #MoodPitch, so I could participate in the event, but I just wasn’t there yet, I still had about 10k words to go.

The thing is, once you understand the adrenaline rush of a pitch like and a full request, it becomes addicting. I hadn’t sent a query in at least a month, and I was itching for another fix. And I knew SUGAR & SPICE was good. The concept was a new twist on a favorite classic storyline, and the characters were dripping with voice. I was so curious to see how it would perform in a pitch event. Plus, since #PitMad and #LGBTNPit were cancelled, I wouldn’t have another chance to participate for at least 3-4 months. So, I ignored the guidelines and threw my SUGAR & SPICE pitch into the fold.

And, holy fucking shit.

11 agent likes. 3 editor likes, and 1 retweet (from a SMP editor!!!!). I had never done that well in a pitch event ever. I got likes from absolute DREAM agents! One of the agent likes was from the cool as fuck agent that still had the full manuscript of A LESSON IN FALLING from #DVPit (I told you to remember!), and I felt like I was on cloud nine. I rode this #MoodPitch high for weeks!

By God, I knew I had to get my ass into shape and finish the damn manuscript. And I knew I was close, too, but I was worried that by the time I’d revised a significant enough portion of it to start querying, agents would close to queries, and it would be too close to Christmas. So many of the agents on my list had already closed by mid-November. I didn’t know when they’d open again, and I’m very quick with my revisions, so I knew I’d have them finished by the New Year. I was so scared I would have to wait until March-April to send a majority of my queries, and I stressed myself out to the point that I did another very dumb thing.

I finished the first draft of SUGAR & SPICE. And I sent it out to about 10 agents that were still open to queries.

Don’t worry, I revised my opening pages 2 times before sending my query, so at least there’s that. But I was being careless. I hadn’t revised the full manuscript, I hadn’t heard back from beta readers yet, I wasn’t personalizing queries, and I was sending them right before agents closed for the holidays, effectively burying my query in holiday slush piles. There is also the unfortunate fact that some (not all, as no group of people is a monolith) agents seem to expect authors to impulsively do this after NaNoWriMo, and I’d done exactly what they had anticipated. Which resulted in more than a few rejections.

I did message the agents that still had A LESSON IN FALLING, and asked if they’d like to see SUGAR & SPICE. Only one actually replied, the #DVPit agent that had also been a SUGAR & SPICE #MoodPitch like. She told me to send it over, and I did!

The holidays were torturously radio silent, and it made me feel like SUGAR & SPICE was dying in the trenches (I never claimed not to be dramatic). This is the part that’s inadvisable. Just fucking wait until the New Year to send your queries. I know that waiting is horrible and awful, but it’s better than rushing the whole process and receiving less than ideal results.

The New Year finally rolled around, and I had a second draft of SUGAR & SPICE. Agents were starting to open, and I was stalking their QueryTracker and QueryManager forms for updates, sending in my query the moment they opened back up.

I got so many full requests, so much faster than I had for A LESSON IN FALLING. In the next month and a half, I had 11 agents with my full manuscript, and I was preparing to participate in two Valentine’s Day pitch events for romance authors.

Even though I’d basically shelved A LESSON IN FALLING, with just two agents still reading the full manuscript and all my other queries for that manuscript closed out, things were finally starting to look up.

The Offer (For real this time)

On the weekend before Valentine’s Day, an agent (the #DVPit and #MoodPitch agent) had tweeted a couple things that caught my eye.

“I am so fortunate to be reading SO MANY GOOD THINGS even while closed to queries!”

“I need to catch up on my reading. *reads 420 pages in one day*“

This agent had both of my manuscripts, one of which was 370 pages, which meant, theoretically, if she were reading both of them…no, surely not. She’s definitely not reading my manuscripts. Time to shut down that train of thought. Though I did send the tweets to my friends (shoutout to Urvi and Magic Discord), and vented my hopes to them.

But then, *DUN DUN*

Let me set the stage. It’s 8:45 in the morning on February 13, 2023. I am so tired. I have just arrived at my boring job, and am watching TikToks on the clock in a room by myself. I check my e-mail, as I do every 5 minutes, and I find this:

The crop on that photo is intentional, as that is precisely where I stopped reading, and quite literally, jumped out of my chair screaming.

AN OFFER!!!! FROM ONE OF THE COOLEST AGENCIES!!! FROM ONE OF THE BEST ROMANCE AGENTS!!!! FOR THE MANUSCRIPT I HAD BASICALLY SHELVED!!!! I HAD BEEN WAITING 11 MONTHS FOR THIS!!! MY HEART LITERALLY STOPPED BEATING, AND I FELL TO THE FUCKING FLOOR!!!

My mother works in the same building I do, and I speedwalked all the way to her room to shove my phone in her face to make her read the e-mail. Then I sent it to every single one of my friends, and Magic Discord, who hyped me up endlessly. I honestly couldn’t feel my hands, and my entire body was shaking. I had never been happier in my life.

I scheduled the call for that Friday (I worked 8 hours every single day that week except for Friday), and it was the longest fucking week of my life. I couldn’t sleep a wink until Wednesday. If you know me, you know I’m a narcissistic shithead, which means you know how crazy I must have been going to be doubting myself by the time Thursday night rolled around. So many questions were bouncing around inside my skull: what if this was a request for an R&R? What if this agent spoke to me and decided we weren’t a good fit? What if I had another bad experience like I did with the small press?

I think I grew at least 10 new grey hairs that week (I am 22 years old).

The Call

Unlike my call with the small press, I knew in the first five minutes of this call that I wanted to sign with this agent. She loved A LESSON IN FALLING. She loved SUGAR & SPICE. She loved my characters and my writing and she was so excited to champion sexy, steamy as fuck F/F romances.

She had answers for all of my questions, and explained everything to me in-depth, in case I wasn’t familiar with publishing standards. She said she valued transparency and communication with her clients above all else, and that she was a detail-oriented editor, which I think meshes perfectly with the standards I set for my own writing.

Her vision for A LESSON IN FALLING aligned perfectly with what I had envisioned, and her enthusiasm for my manuscript was so infectious. We clicked instantly, and even figured out that the main theme of one of my current WIPs is something she’d actively been looking for in a romance book. Everything was perfect!

I officially had an offer of representation. It wasn’t going to be like last time, where I would come out of my waiting period with nothing to show for it.

I was going to be agented! With my first ever manuscript! What the fuck!!!!!!!

In My hashtag vague era

I immediately sent nudges to every agent with my full manuscript and query. Which was…a lot. I’d gotten a little query happy towards the end of January, not realizing what was coming.

So, there I am. Sitting at my kitchen table sending nudges. And then my phone rings. I look at the caller I.D. and—

WHAT THE FUCK WHY IS AN AGENT I SENT A NUDGE TO FIVE MINUTES AGO CALLING ME?!?!?!?!

I threw my phone around like a hot potato and made my family get out of the room before I answered it. I think I might have had a heart attack or seven.

She was calling to ask me about A LESSON IN FALLING, which I hadn’t sent her; I’d only sent her SUGAR & SPICE. I stuttered and stammered my way through that call, and she asked me to send her both manuscripts so she could make a decision by Monday.

I hung up, feeling like I’d just taken 47 different narcotics, and continued sending my nudges. That afternoon, I received about 4 full requests from agents that only had my query. And some of them asked me to send A LESSON IN FALLING too (even some that had previously rejected it)!

Of course, there were rejections too. But, I didn’t care! I was at peace with the fact that I had an incredible offer on the table, and the rejections were not of import. Truthfully, I was hoping I didn’t get another offer, because making that decision would surely kill me. Like the guilt of declining another offer would just fuckin’ merk me.

And then something unbelievable happened.

The following Wednesday, I GOT ANOTHER E-MAIL?????

Lord, I didn’t think I was going to come out of my waiting period alive. Like I was simply going to pass away.

I scheduled this call for the following week, and continued to watch my inbox fill with more rejections (gratefully).

The Call Part 2

I knew I was truly fucked when I went into this call, and not even five minutes later, I loved this agent too. She was just as passionate about SUGAR & SPICE as the previous agent was over A LESSON IN FALLING. She had just as much heart for marginalized creators, and our conversation flowed so easily. She had answers to all my questions, and was so incredibly kind and complimentary of my manuscript. The hour-long call was so wonderful, and I was so devastated that I had to choose between two brilliant, passionate agents.

The only difference was that this agent had a more broad, bigger picture editorial style, and that’s why she had been drawn to my manuscript. She said that the writing was clean and readable, and that way she’d be able to focus on plot, character arcs, etc. This was very sweet, but concerning, as I definitely wanted an agent that would ensure every little detail was perfect before my book went on submission to editors. I was also concerned about being represented by an agency that didn’t have many rom-coms on their list of titles. The agency and agent themselves are incredible, don’t get me wrong! I would have been very content if this was my only offer, but it wasn’t.

And I unfortunately had an incredibly tough decision to make.

The decision (fucking finally)

In the end, after 3 weeks of waiting for every agent with my full manuscript to get back to me, I decided to sign with Samantha Fabien of Root Literary Agency! Samantha is such a legend, and a complete dream agent. I’m so happy that I didn’t take the initial offer of publication from the small press this past summer, and that I waited and trusted that I could find a better home for my silly characters.

The future is so bright, and I absolutely can’t wait to see how far I’m able to take my career now that I’ve entered this partnership with Samantha and RLA!

I hope, after reading this, that you understand that querying will always be hard, and it might seem pointless at times, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I know that every HIGMA post in history has uttered these words, but keep writing. It’s tough and it’s brutal and it’s draining, but you can’t get an agent or a book deal for a book you haven’t written yet.

I believe in you! Mwah!

The Query Letter (Ominous)

I thought that seeing the query letter that landed me my agent might be useful for querying writers, so I’ve pasted it below! Do know that Samantha only received my query letter for A LESSON IN FALLING, not SUGAR & SPICE. Also know that I’ve removed the biography paragraph for confidentiality, and that you should be adding one to your query letter!

Dear Ms. Samantha Fabien,

I am excited to share A LESSON IN FALLING, an adult F/F contemporary romance capping out at 98,000 words. I noticed in your MSWL that you’re looking for marginalized contemporary romance with obsessive, chaotic themes, and I am pleased to inform you that A LESSON IN FALLING is a steamy, intense, character-driven bodyguard romance between a lesbian fashion designer and her bisexual bodyguard. This story combines the protective themes and deadly violence of TWISTED GAMES and the all-consuming sapphic tension of THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO. 

Holland Bellerose always gets what she wants. And what she wants is to run her business, party with her friends, while avoiding romance like it’s the next plague. 

When a mugging nearly costs her her life, the 28-year-old celebrity fashion designer is forced to hire a private security team. Holland strikes a deal with her mother: if she can prove that she is able to protect herself, she can fire the bodyguards. What she doesn’t expect is a complication in the form of Olive Shaw, the smug head of her security team and world-famous ex-boxer.

After realizing the dangers of everyday life, Holland asks her head bodyguard to teach her how to fight, and they can’t help but form a connection, despite the conflict of interest. Shortly after meeting Olive, Holland is offered the career opportunity of a lifetime, and she knows she must do everything in her power to eliminate her bodyguards, and any further distractions from her lifelong goals, from the equation. 

When Holland can’t deny her irrevocable attraction to Olive Shaw, she finds that even the most calculated risks can lead to the deadliest falls. 

Querying Stats (even more ominous)

This is so embarrassing. I’m so serious. I went a little nuts with the queries, and someone should have blocked QueryManager from my browser because this is ridiculous. But I know most people love the statistics portion of HIGMA posts, so here you go. Enjoy my shame.

A LESSON IN FALLING:

Queries Sent: 153

Query Rejections: 96

Closed/No Response: 34

Full Requests: 17

Partial Requests: 5

Full Rejections: 16

Total Agent Pitch Likes: 6

Offers: 1

SUGAR & SPICE:

Queries Sent: 98

Query Rejections: 64

Closed/No Response: 14

Full Requests: 15

Partial Requests: 2

Full Rejections: 13

Total Agent Pitch Likes: 11

Offers: 2 (including Samantha)

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