How I Got My Agent!

Signing my contract and celebrating with chocolate (no surprise).

(Short version)

I went to the SDSU writer’s Conference. Kevan Lyon had reviewed the first ten of Bette Noir and asked for a full when I met with her; two weeks later I got the call, and signed with her right away.

(Ridiculously long and personal version)

I’d always wanted to be a writer, but in the fall of 2010 I decided that it was time for me to actually get serious so I got a roommate to help pay the bills so I could go part-time at work for a year, finished/polished up my first book (YA about a chic secret society of wicked stepmothers and a stepdaughter battling them all to save her dad), and started learning about the publishing industry via obsessive blog reading/comparing notes with the talented Karen Clayton and attending conferences where I picked up friends and an amazingly insightful critique partner/friend in Alison Ashley Formento. I blogged about my experiences here.

I carefully researched agents and sent out queries to what I thought was a lot of agents (maybe 20?) and got half a dozen requests for fulls as well as some nice initial rejection letters. All of the agents sent back nice letters of rejection after reading my work. Many gave me tips on how to make the work better and wrote some nice things about my writing (as a teacher I am deeply touched that they took the time to invest in my writing and give me feedback that I treated like gold), but none was a taker. So I moved on.

My next work, Bette Noir, (YA) tumbled out of me in verse after the most difficult break-up of my dating life (one of the darker periods in my life). I'd become fascinated by the way confronting the darkness we all face has the power to make us strong, and tried my hand at writing my way into figuring out my answer to that philosophical question. On a whim I signed up at last minute for The Big Sur writing conference the night I finished the first draft. When there, I had the honor of working with Brandy Rivers and Sharyn November who gave me the confidence I needed to keep going, and excellent advice on how to shape/make more marketable the work so I re-wrote the ms into verse and prose. I also came to make some amazing writing friends in my thinkingtoinking blogmates. They’ve been beyond wonderful.

After revising Bette Noir, I submitted the ms to five agents (2 full requests with nice rejections), and put it in one contest, and then stopped submitting (not a move supported by many of my friends). I know it sounds cheesy, but while my first ms was a lot of fun to write, this one wasn’t much fun since I was writing a love story through a broken heart. In the midst of my devastation from the break-up, exploring the ways that love and the arts can heal was what got me through, and I didn’t want to send something so personal out unless I was absolutely certain it would be in the right hands (from my experience, all the agents I've researched and met at conferences are great, but I really wanted a great fit with me/my quirks) so I put it in a drawer and moved on to my next work.

One of my very talented best friends/partners in crime is also named Lauren (same height & same hair as well), and our mutual friends are always asking us to write up our shenanigans so I took a break from YA to write a women’s fiction book with her about said shenanigans (so what if the Gin Blossoms are missing one of their five back-up tambourines? They still invited us out on their boat). I finally agreed to write the story with her in a café in Soho after 1. She was lamenting the burden of student loans and 2. A creepy man randomly offered me a role as Julianne Moore in a pornography film. Gross. Not the Julianne part, that’s flattering; she’s lovely, but porn??? I told the other Lauren I didn’t love her enough to do porn to help her with her student loans, but that I did love her enough to write a book with her (she is a very talented writer) to try to help pay said loans. We’re currently putting the finishing touches on The Mostly Untrue Adventures of the Laurens Monahan and Avenius.

THE Kevan Lyon--
As smart & good as she is beautiful.

And then the SDSU Writer’s Conference rolled around. It was local. I figured I’d get to hear some good speakers, and steeled myself to send in Bette Noir to Kevan Lyon because she seemed like such a sharp thinker/good person. Based on her reputation online she seemed like she cared about women and that she would be someone I could trust and whose vision was sound. During the consultation she asked for me to send her my full ms. As we kept chatting, we figured out that I had taught her daughter years ago. I can’t tell you how much I loved teaching her daughter. I knew right then that anyone who could raise a young woman like that was exactly the one I wanted guiding my career, and I hoped and prayed like crazy that she’d want to take me on. Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, she emailed me telling me that she loved the book that came out of both my heartbreak and hope. I signed with The Marsal Lyon Literary Agency the following Monday.

Picture I took at the beach on Valentine's Day after the call.
Reminds me that as much as life can disappoint,
it can also surprise you in the most beautiful ways.

And now...head down...back to work...the journey is long and I'm sure will be full of many more ups and definitely plenty of downs, too.

If you want to follow that little personal journey, please "like" my brand new author page on Facebook.

Much Love & Chocolate

XOXO

--Lauren

How I Got My Agent!

I am so, so, so excited to announce that I'm now represented by Jennifer Azantian of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency!

I've always found "how I got my agent" posts to be very motivating--so in the hope that others might feel the same way, here's mine. (Fair warning: it's long!)

THE LONG-TIMERS is the third novel I queried. I started writing seriously in 2010 and banged out what I thought was a pretty decent YA paranormal novel by the end of the year. I sent off a whole bunch of email queries (75 or 80, maybe? I remember it was a lot!), to pretty much anyone who represented the genre. This shotgun approach resulted in a handful of requests to read fulls and partials, and while every single one ended in a polite form rejection, it was enough to convince me I wasn't completely nuts.

Figuring I'd probably do better with another genre, one that wasn't quite so saturated, I decided to try writing a MG sci-fi novel next. As with my first manuscript, I got a handful of partial and full requests, but each one ended with a polite rejection.

But around this time, I lucked into my first real critique partner (hi Laura!). We met through our husbands and discovered we both wrote YA, so we decided to meet once a week and work through our previously completed manuscripts, critiquing a chapter a week.

Holy crap. Seriously, if you've never had a real CP, one who's also a writer, one who's willing to dig into your work and discuss it with you for hours, you NEED ONE. My writing improved immensely after just a few months of weekly meetings.

In late 2011, I figured I'd try my hand at another YA manuscript. I'd just finished the first draft of THE LONG-TIMERS when I stumbled across an agent's blog post promoting the 2012 Big Sur Writing Workshop--which was only a six hour drive away from where I was living at the time. The idea of going to an actual writing conference terrified me, to be honest. I wouldn't know anyone there. I'd never had more than one person actually critique my work. I'd have to meet (and talk to!) live agents. But somehow I screwed up my nerve and signed up. And I'm so glad I did! The conference was amazing. Not only did I meet my future Thinking to Inking co-bloggers there, but I also had actual conversations with several agents and got amazing feedback from editors and fellow attendees.

Just as I was finishing up the revisions from the conference and getting ready to start querying, I found out about a Twitter pitch party and signed up for an account. Suddenly (seriously, I still can't believe how fast this happened), I was a member of a thriving, awesome, incredibly supportive Twitter writing community.

I started querying THE LONG-TIMERS in June of 2012. This time, I was determined to query in small batches. This turned out to be really smart, because I got some tremendously helpful feedback early on which helped me make the manuscript much stronger. While I was waiting for responses, I entered contests--and to my surprise and delight, I started getting lots of requests! One of these was the Gearing Up to Get An Agent (GUTGAA) blogfest pitch contest, hosted by the lovely Deana Barnhart. I was thrilled when I made it to the agent round of the contest and even more thrilled when I got multiple agent requests to read partials--one of them from Jennifer.

I had over three times more requests to read material for THE LONG-TIMERS than my previous two manuscripts combined, but then the rejections started to roll in. Most of them were personalized--a big change from my first query attempts--and they were incredibly nice (I'm convinced literary agents are some of the nicest people on earth). But almost every rejection said the same thing: I really like these specific parts, but I'm not connecting with the whole thing/don't love it enough to represent it.

Well. As you can imagine, I felt a little discouraged. At the end of November, Jennifer emailed me to say she had loved the first fifty pages of the manuscript and wanted to read more, but I told myself not to get my hopes up. She probably would be another in the string of agents who liked it, but didn't like it enough.

So when I got Jennifer's email telling me she loved it, I just about fell off my chair. When she called me to offer representation, I was bowled over by her passion and excitement for the manuscript. I am beyond thrilled to be working with her and so happy that I finally found the exact right advocate for my work.

The moral of this particular story: get yourself out there! If I hadn't gotten together with critique partners, gone to conferences, and hooked up with a larger writing community, there's no way I'd be writing this post today.

I am incredibly grateful to the friends who helped me get to this point: my wonderful first CP Laura; Jenn, Stacy, and Lauren (seriously the nicest co-bloggers/critique partners I could ask for); Erin and Andrew for the great critique notes; Dee and Summer for being amazing and awesome and incredibly supportive; and my husband Gavin, who's stuck by me through all this craziness and makes everything possible. I love all of you guys!

Stats (because I know I always like to see them, heh):
Queries sent: 55
Rejections: 31
No-response: 13
Partial requests: 14 (9 from contests, 3 from queries, 2 from in-person pitches)
Full requests: 15 (8 from queries, 3 from contests, 4 upgraded from partials)