I've Signed with a Literary Agent!

Three years ago I penned my first book. A year after that I signed with a wonderful small press, but eventually decided the story wasn't what I wanted my debut to be (writing issues, plotting issues) and itched to write something fresh. So then I wrote another story, and it had a lot of problems, too. When I sent it out to readers I got scary reviews like, "I was completely lost," and "There wasn't any tension," and when I took it to a workshop (taught by David Farland) I learned the entire plot was off the mark. But Dave was so encouraging and helped me outline the new book.

So I rewrote, and hurried (uh-oh). I found out I was pregnant and knew I would become insanely sick so I finished writing, edited a few things, then queried with an okay query letter, received a few requests, but was ultimately rejected in the end.

Nine grueling months later, I gave birth to my third beautiful baby, and immediately lambasted my husband with the mandate that I would have writing time now that I was no longer puking out my guts, my blood pressure was finally not out of wack, and I no longer wanted to kill kill kill everything in sight. I hired TWO babysitters to wrestle my three youngsters once a week in the summer so I could revise. (I couldn't get that second story I wrote out of my head, and with a nine month break I could suddenly see the story with unbiased eyes.)

The plot was good--like I said, David Farland had helped me with that. But the world-building and the prose and characters really needed to come alive. So I spent several months fixing these issues (thanks to the babysitters tending my kids), then sent it out to beta readers and they told me what they thought I could do before sending it out.

But I had another problem. That dreaded query. I had read so many tips on writing a good query and nothing ever felt right. But then I listened to a conference call with Elana Johnson on writing a query and EVERYTHING MADE SENSE and I wrote the best darndest query I've ever written. I submitted it to about thirty agents, received six requests, and *dun dun dun* received *ahhhhh!!* one supernal offer!

So who is this literary agent you might ask? I give you Kat Salazar of Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency!

It's funny. When I first tried to query Kat, I couldn't find her email address (she had just become an agent) so I emailed Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada who share a joint email address and asked them to forward my query. Lucky for me they did! Kat asked for the full one month later and offered a month after that! But then...

I wrote her an email to say "Yes! Thank you! Other agents still have my manuscript so I would like a week to give them time to read and make my final decision" and I didn't hear back! And I wrote her again across three weeks three more times and nothing, nothing, nothing and I could not understand what had gone wrong.

When I had pretty much decided she changed her mind because 1) she decided the manuscript was indeed not good enough or 2) her instincts screamed CRAZY STALKER! STAY VERY FAR AWAY! she wrote me back explaining every single one of my emails ended up in her spam filter. Also, Kat had gone on two trips during those three weeks and chaos had ensued. But, I am happy to say we have NOT had communication issues since.

So now we're in business. And I've been dying to share the news but wanted to be sure I had the green light and she just said yes. :)

A few more things on Kat? She's excited! And I'm excited! It's so exciting to work with someone who's EXCITED about my work! You can follow her on Twitter (@KatLovesBooks) and you can visit her at her blog (http://www.theweeklykatscan.blogspot.com). She's impressive, and savvy, and professional, and fun. And we have so many of the same tastes in stories I couldn't be happier this time has come.

And what's my manuscript about? Well... I'm going to keep a lid on it for now since I'm about to go on submission, but suffice it to say it's for YA and it's dark.