Announcement

Listening to: Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'". Oh, hush up and let me have my sentimental fun, will ya? =)

I have no idea how to really start this blog post, so I'm just gonna dive in headfirst.

I have an agent.

As of this morning, I've officially accepted representation from Marlene Stringer of the Stringer Literary Agency. She offered representation based on my novel Grim Light, which many of you kids have watched me write. And I say now, thanks for sticking around through the craziness. And the craziness of querying, and all the craziness in between.

Wait, what am I saying? All that craziness had to be pretty entertaining.

Anyhow...holy tangent, Batman.

So.

The story.

I started querying Grim Light a little over two weeks ago. Yes, I know all the other writers out there want to hit me right now. Please don't hit me! Remember that I've queried three other novels, so it's not like this really happened right out of the gate.

Marlene emailed me last Wednesday to ask for a partial. I sent it and tried to think of other things. I was not successful, but I tried.

Then on Thursday, she asked for the rest.

I was a bit distracted on Friday. I think it took me 45 minutes to load the dishwasher. I would find myself standing in the living room with a dirty cup in one hand and a fork in the other, wondering how I'd gotten there.*

Then I stopped waiting and checking my mail and my phone, because it was the weekend and I figured the chances of getting any news were slim.

Silly writer, eh?

She emailed me on Saturday night, and I got it first thing Sunday morning. She loved Grim Light and wanted to speak on Monday to see if we suited each other.

We're gonna fast forward through the big smiles and the undignified dancing, k? You can all imagine it pretty well, I'm sure.

So I was up bright and early on Monday, waiting for The Call. I knew it wasn't coming until around 9, but I didn't want to be all groggy when it came. I'm somewhat incoherent for the first half hour of the day, and "incoherent" is hardly a good first impression for a writer to make.

We spoke for a little over an hour, and it was awesome. I knew very quickly that she was the perfect agent for me, but she wanted me to take a day or two to digest everything and contact some of her clients for their opinions.

So I did. Nothing but awesome, across the board. And the clients themselves seem pretty darn cool too, all very welcoming and interested in me and my writing. I feel like I've joined a very warm and talented family.

And then there was maybe a little celebrating. Just a little. And because I am lucky and I have such wonderful people in my life, I got TWO flower deliveries within a few hours of The Call.


The left ones are from my friends Amy and John, and the right ones are from The Husband.

So, after a day of calling people and celebrating and trying to make myself believe it, I called my agent--that's right, I said it--and officially accepted representation. We're both very excited about this, and I think it's gonna be a great working relationship.

I know I have a long road ahead. But it's been a long road getting here, so I'm gonna take a moment to thank everyone. So many of you have been so supportive and helpful, you've followed all the highs and lows and encouraged me and read my work, and it's helped more than you know.

So thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.

And now, because I know you're all wondering, "But what does the cat think of this?", I give you the Cat of Cats, The Bard himself, Shakespeare, looking very excited and proud:


Don't let his stern looks fool you. He really is very happy for me. No, really. He only tried to bite me once yesterday. That's totally cat-speak for "YAAAAY!"

*This is a slight exaggeration. Slight.

And the Insanity Begins...

I spent most of Friday and Saturday compiling information on agents that sell in my genre(s). What fun, what fun!

I still have all my info from the last time I did the query merry-go-round, but I decided to start fresh this time. After all, some agents change agencies or start their own shops, some stop accepting unsolicited queries, and some just stop agenting. I wanted to make sure that my information was fresh and up-to-date.

One of the things that bothered me the last time I did this was that I only had a nebulous idea of what "level" each agent stood at. Top-tier agent, middle-of-the-road agent, might-not-even-want-to-query them agent? So this time, I decided to create a ranking system. I used several factors for my ranking:

• Are they a member of the AAR?
• Do they have sales verified by Preditors and Editors?
• Do they have a "Recommended" or "Highly Recommended" rating from P&E?
• Do they sell YA?
• Do they sell fantasy?

I created a spreadsheet in which I documented the answer to each of these questions for each agent I researched. Then I gave one "point" for each "Yes". E.g., an agent who is a member of the AAR, has verified sales, is recommended by P&E, and sells YA AND fantasy receives five points. An agent who is NOT a member of the AAR, does NOT sell fantasy, does NOT have an actual recommendation from P&E, but sells YA and has verified sales, receives two points.

I ranked 44 agents on these criteria. Results:

• 5-pointers: 6
• 4-pointers: 13
  
• 3-pointers: 14
  
• 2-pointers: 8
  
• 1-pointers: 2

I'm well aware that my criteria are not all equal--for instance, an agent who doesn't have a membership with the AAR but has a recommendation from P&E might be just as good as an agent who has both. Hey, I didn't say I was perfect, did I? The system just gives me a better idea of which agents I want to target.

My big concern right now is who to query, and when. I know most people say to start at the top and work your way down. I, however, think it might be more worthwhile to try a more scattershot approach, at least at first. I'm considering sending my first batch of queries to a mixture of agents: maybe two 4-pointers, one 3-pointer, and two 2-pointers. If I don't receive any requests for partials from that batch, then I'll know that my query needs some revision before I try any of the big guys.

Any thoughts?