How I Got My Agent!!!!!!

Guys, contests are cool. They're kind of my crack. Brenda Drake got me addicted back with Pitch Madness in August....when I was just a baby with my very first manuscript who didn't know a query from a synopsis, an MS from an MC, and I had no idea what the heck a CP was...fast forward a bit. 1 more contest later. On October 31st, I realized I had about 30,000 words written on my newest WIP. And  about 50,000 to go. So, I decided to be crazy and do NaNoWriMo. And, to my shock, I finished! I got in 50,000 words and finished my book (Never, Never) by the end of November.

Then came PitchWars a couple days later, where I got a fabulous mentor, known to some as Fizzygrrl and some as Summer, who helped me put all the finishing touches on Never, Never. I had a few requests from that, which was super exciting. Before the Pitch Wars pitches went live, since I was all high on contests, I happened to come across a twitter pitch event called Pitch Bree, and thought Hey! Why not? She requested (Another woooo) and I sent in my manuscript...Fast forward again, to about 2 weeks later...

So, it was a Monday like any other Monday...I was sittin at my laptop, obsessively refreshing my Yahoo email, like I do, and then, in came an email, the likes of which I hadn't seen. The subject line read..."Re: NEVER, NEVER." And it was from this super fantabulous agent. So, naturally, I assumed, Oh great, another rejection. When I clicked on it, I was all:

But thennnn, I read it. And, to my shock 'n awe, it DIDN'T say, "Hey, your book sucks." What it actually said was "I'd love to offer you representation." At this point, I went from this:

To this:

And finally, to this:

Yup. I cried a little bit. I'm emotional. When I called the hubs, he thought something was terribly, horribly wrong. But it TOTALLY WASN'T. So, we emailed back and forth, and she told me to call her THAT DAY cause she was all excited! After my child finalllly fell asleep, I called her up (after staring at the phone for like 5 minutes) and she said all these fantabulous amazing things about my book, and basically every thing she said was perfect. And I'm pretty sure that all I said during the entire conversation was "Awesome," several times. I mean, I asked her questions and stuff, but basically I forgot all the words. I'm sure after we hung up, she was like, 'Man. That girl used up her entire vocabulary in her book, and now she's forgotten English.' But she was nice enough to not say those things. So, you know, that was good.

Utilizing much more self-control than I usually possess, I coolly said, "Okay, well, I'll get back to you in a week. Awesome." Cause my mind kept telling me over and over:

This picture pretty much sums it up...

 

On the left: How I acted like I felt.      On the right: How I ACTUALLY felt.

 

 

But, about 15 seconds after I hung up the phone, I desperately wanted to call her back and be like:

 

I didn't though. I forced myself to wait until the next Monday. I got an offer from one other agent,from Pitch Wars actually, which I really appreciated, and several of the nicest, most encouraging rejections ever, i.e. "bowing out."
But ultimately, I couldn't get that first agent out of my head. She was just soooo enthusiastic and upfront about everything, and so cool. She really *got* my book. Everything about it. And she believed in Hook. At one point, she said, "I hope you sign with me, but even if you don't, I'll totally support you. No matter what you choose, I just wanna see this thing on the shelves." And that kind of awesome is tough to beat, folks. Sooooo, I signed with Bree Ogden of D4EO Literary.

WOOOOOOOO!





Yup. You can just call us Bri-squared. That concludes that, readers. I have an agent.


The Stats, (cause it seems everyone loves stats)

Queries Sent: 15
Partial Requests: 4
Full Requests: 9
(Note: A lot of these requests were not from actual queries, so the ratio of queries to requests was a lot lower than the stats suggest.)
Offers: 2

GIANT thanks to my lovely CP's and betas: Nazarea, Rachel, Tabitha, Darci, Carol, Juliana, Stacey, and Chase (my brother, as well as writer/CP :-)) And a couple others who went out of their way to help me out or give referrals, or awesome things: Cat and Steph.
Lastly, HUGE thanks to my lovely and awesome Pitch Wars mentor: Summer Heacock, who has basically been one giant fizzy ball of encouragement and help!

Bye, all! I'm off to go frolick.