My Agent Story

I promised the more coherent details of finding my agent.  For those who missed the announcement on Tuesday, I am excited and honored and delighted to announce that I have officially signed with the fabulous Vickie Motter of Andrea Hurst Literary Management. (Yes, the adjectives are ALL very important to that sentence). 

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am. 

The last few days have been a whirlwind. Here’s how it happened:

I first read about Vickie Motter on Krista V’s website Mother. Write. Repeat. (Thanks, Krista, for your wonderful agent interviews!) Thinking that my YA contemporary might be a good fit, I sent my query to Vickie in early January. Over the next couple of weeks, she requested a partial, then more pages (along with my author bio and synopsis). While I was on vacation in Florida, she requested the full! The worst part of vacation was that I couldn’t send it to her until I got home!

Vickie made THE CALL on 2/24. I had convinced myself it would be a revision request. When she said, “I’m offering you representation” I think I stopped breathing. Because her next words were, “have you been holding your breath this whole time?”

We won’t talk about all the questions I forgot to ask during our conversation—but she was kind enough to respond to everything I needed to know via email the next day!

I officially signed with Vickie on March 1. My only regret is that she’s on the other coast. Not because I don’t think she can do a great job from there—I’m confident in her ability. It’s just that I dearly long to say “I’m not available today, I’m having lunch with my agent.” Maybe someday.  

I’m thrilled to start the next phase of my writing career. I will be working on revisions with Vickie in preparation of subbing my novel to publishers this spring. I’m terrified. I mean, um, completely confident.

Oh, and I need to say that I would definitely NOT be where I am without the support and friendship of my three crit partners. Ansha Kotyk, Laura Pauling, and Jen Carson—have been cheerleaders, task-masters, copy-editors and good FRIENDS. I can’t believe how lucky (I mean, how smart!) I was when I sat next to Ansha at the 2008  NESCBWI conference. Love you guys!

And thanks to Vickie Motter for loving my story and taking a chance on me. I’m so excited to be working with you! 

I'm not really a superstitious person, but my co-worker took me to lunch the day I accepted Vickie's offer.  I grabbed a bag of chips and my drink. When I got to the table, I looked at my chips. The universe just told me I made the right choice.

I know you all want to know the stats, so here they are:

I started querying officially in June 2010. I sent a couple of “too early” queries earlier in 2010, but that’s another post. According to QueryTracker.net, I sent 67 queries. Of those, I had eight full requests and four partial requests. 

So my advice to all my writer friends is KEEP QUERYING. (After, of course, you write a great story, have it critiqued, and revise, revise, revise.) It just takes one agent to love your story—but it might take a bit of work to find that one person. 

I’ll blog more about my query and my book soon, so stay tuned. 

Check back on Monday for a party!! Get your recipes ready! Psst...There might be an agent query critique up for grabs, as well as other cool prizes!