Cue Mario mushroom noises!
That's right! I have an agent. I've reached that glorious second level of writer careerhood—taken a bold step outside my own creative bubble—and I couldn't be more grateful or relieved! My agent story is an unusual one. Literal proof that the "many paths to publication" adage is a real thing.
Day of the Excessive Exclamation Point ahead!!!
(because ! is my current aesthetic)
This story begins like most agent stories do. With a manuscript—fresh off the fingertips and still glowing with first draft naivety. This manuscript is HOW TO SAVE A LIFE. In the beginning it was my Mary Poppins—practically perfect in every way—but as the weeks went by and the file grew stale in my documents folder, it started to lose its muchness. I knew it needed that elusive MORE, but the feedback I was receiving from CPs was mostly a lot of thumbs uping. So I became stuck, wanting to revise but having no direction to work towards.
This is the point in the story where I rejoined twitter after a very long hiatus to attempt social media-ing again. And to stalk...uh, follow the very small handful of agents I'd queried! It was July 2017, and there was this buzz on twitter about this prestigious writing mentorship contest.
"Pitchwars," I thought to myself. "That sounds like a scary and glorious opportunity!"
I threw the idea of entering at one of my CPs and got an enthusiastic "DO EET!" in return. So I did eet, and boy am I glad I did!!
Long story short, the fabulous Kit Frick, YA author of SEE ALL THE STARS (preorder HERE. No really...you want this book. I'll wait.) selected HOW TO SAVE A LIFE as her mentor pick, and finally I had a direction to revise in! I could write an entire blog post about how amazing Kit and her edit letter were, but I'll save that for another day. Just know that she rocks! A lot!!
November 2017 brought with it the Pitchwars agent showcase—the pot of gold at the end of this bittersweet and exhausting revision rainbow. Spoiler Alert: my pot of gold ended up being more like a teaspoon of gold. I told myself no matter what, the real prize was this shiny new manuscript of mine. But it still felt like a punch in the emotional gut to watch so many amazing agents breeze past my entry. To witness the (very well deserving, mind you) manuscripts around mine zoom to 40+ requests while mine slowly clawed its way up to 3.
I was a failure. An impostor.
(Disclaimer: neither of these things were true for me or anyone else in the Low to No PWs Request Club. But there's no denying those feelings did exist at the time)
And then something happened—something so far off my "this is the real-world" radar it almost felt like I made it up. A fellow writer & friend was chatting with a non-Pitchwars agent, and the topic of the Pitchwars showcase came up. Fellow writer (you know who you are, and I love you for what you did) expressed disappointment in watching so many good entries be ignored. The agent's curiosities were peaked when my entry was mentioned, and I was asked to send the query + full manuscript to her personal email. With freshly lifted spirits, I readied my work and sent it off to both her and my teaspoon's worth of Pitchwars agents.
This is where my life changes—drastically and all at once.
Less than 36 hours after hitting send I woke up to an email from the non-Pitchwars agent who went out on a limb for me. I held my breath, braced myself for the rejection, and opened it. But it was not a rejection, it was an offer—a beautiful, tear-inducing offer. I ran straight to Kit Frick's inbox with a totally level head.
Me Actually:
The first agent to read my manuscript actually loved it?? Is this real life? So, I wasn't the fluke or the woeful stain on the fabric of the Pitch Wars name my mind kept trying to convince me I was?
That email was clearly the validation I so badly needed. And Kit, being the fabulous mentor she is, walked me through it all. I wiped my tears, calmed my heart, and politely let the other agents with my work know I had an offer. I also notified those agents I'd managed to query in the 36 hour window between "hitting send" and "offer received".
Cue the sound of floodgates being opened!!!!!!!! (I did warn you about the exclamation points)
I had poked a soft patch of snow on a steep mountain, and was soon buried up to my eyes in emails for requests, rejections, and more offers!! And me? The girl coming off a heartbreaking agent showcase & preparing for the long haul? I wasn't ready for it!
But I survived the avalanche of emails and emotions leading up to my offer deadline! And through it all my heart kept going back to that original offer—the one that started it all. I spoke to incredible agents, some twice, because I had to know who was the right fit for me and my little book. And I'm so proud to announce that the right fit is the remarkable Allison Remcheck at Stimola Literary Studio.
Yes, she was the non-Pitchwars agent and original offer. She loved my work at a time when it felt like no one ever would, and I can't wait to see where it leads us both!
So, thanks to a series of very fortunate (and strange) events, I'm an agented woman! Proof there's no one way to achieving a dream. And proof that no stone should ever be left unturned in this industry. Don't give up when one stone breaks your heart. Keep turning. The next one could be your Allison Remcheck!
I've got a few levels left to unlock, but for now I'm going to celebrate being one step closer to the dream!
Ta Ta for now!
