Getting the Call: Jennie Bates Bozic

Here's a dose of inspiration just in time for Thanksgiving. I'm sure this author is very thankful to be handled by a great agent. Welcome to the latest success story from another AQC regular, Jennie Bates Bozic. She has just recently got the call and is now on submission for her novel, Damselfly. Good luck and best wishes!  

My “Getting the Call” story is different than most because, to those who don’t know my full story, it probably looks like everything worked out for me in record time.  But it’s true that every overnight success is ten years in the making.  In my case, it was eleven.

I began working on my first novel during my sophomore year of college in 2001.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I did know that the world coming together in my head wouldn’t let me go.  For the next nine years, I worked on it from time to time, but would give up in frustration.  I had no idea how to write a novel and I didn’t have the self-discipline to really go after my dream.  But I still wrote in pieces.  I jotted down pages worth of notes.  I shared my scraps with friends and their responses encouraged me to keep trying.  I bought lots of books on writing and storytelling and spent hours wandering around bookstores, trying to get inspired.

After dozens of false starts, I set that book aside and tried a different one.  That went a little more smoothly… until the hard drive of my computer died and I wasn’t able to retrieve my work.  It was gone forever and all I had left were the chapters I had emailed to friends. 

Two years ago, I got married and my husband got fed up with me constantly complaining about how much I wanted to be a writer.  “Why don’t you actually write then instead of talking about it?”

I was mad at him for about an hour, and then the truth of his words sunk in.  So I started writing.  I went back to my first book and cranked out a rough draft.  I took a class in writing for children and young adults.  A year later, I had an extremely rough draft and a terrible query letter. 

I really wanted to make sure everything was completely ready before I sent my first query letter, so I started revising.  As I chopped and sliced and rewrote, the sad realization that my writing reach exceeded my grasp settled down on me.  My skill still wasn’t at the level it needed to be.

I knew at that point that it would be all too easy to give in to frustration and self-pity.  I had worked SO hard, often getting in my daily thousand words even if I’d worked twelve hours that day, and it still wasn’t enough.  But feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to get me any closer to my goal of being a professional author. 

So I sat down and thought long and hard about the kind of story I could write next and I came up with Damselfly.  I wrote the query first and ran it by several people to see if it sounded appealing.  The feedback was encouraging, so I poured myself into writing that novel.  Seven months later, it was finished and I sent out my first queries.

To my great surprise, the first response I got from an agent was not a rejection – it was a full request.  Three weeks and two more full requests later, I woke up one morning and checked my email.  There was an email from one of the agents who was reading my novel.  My heart sank and I opened it. 

And then I screamed.  My husband came running in from the other room, convinced I was dying because I am so NOT a screamer.  All I could do was babble incoherently and hold up the phone so he could read the email himself.

Steven Axelrod wanted me to call him at my convenience to discuss representation. 

It took me a couple of hours to work up my courage, mostly because phone calls with anyone other than family and close friends make me incredibly nervous, which was why I had not included my phone number in my queries. He offered representation right away and then we spent some time discussing what that would mean.  I asked most of my questions, but in my nervousness I forgot about half of them.  Then I told him I would get back to him in about a week because I needed to let the other agents know.

And thus began the longest week of my life.  Eight days later, after an extended deadline due to Hurricane Sandy, I was thrilled to accept Steve’s offer.  I couldn’t be happier and I can’t imagine a better agent for my book and my career.

Hopefully I’ll be getting another call soon – this time with the news that my book has sold!

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Bio: Jennie Bates Bozic’s first "book" was a short kid's story about a brother and a sister who are sent to Saturn as astronauts and meet an alien named Kleppy. Bestseller material there, I tell you! She has a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Hillsdale College and a diploma in 3D Animation in Visual Effects from Lost Boys Learning. She has spent the last four years creating visual effects for film and television. If you've watched shows such as The Walking Dead, Grey's Anatomy, The Event, Heroes or Greek, chances are that you've seen some of her work. She is married to a wonderful man that she met in the World of Warcraft and they live in Los Angeles with their two cats.

Jennie's website - http://www.jenniebatesbozic.com/

Getting the Call: Lynda Williams

Today I'm happy to bring you an author who actually wrote a short about the despair she felt trying to break into publishing. Now she has not one, but seven books published. That's quite an accomplishment. Here's proof that it can be done and there is a market for a well-developed fantasy series. Welcome to Lynda Williams.

Michelle, I would love to share my "Getting the Call" story with you and your readers and to include the link to my story Going Back Out which I wrote when I was feeling despair about ever being a real writer because I couldn't see how I'd ever compete with the "big guys". The writer-analogy is about Gadar, a Reetion pilot who is depressed to discover Sevolites really do fly harder than she can. But, as Ann reminds her, they don't fly for her reasons and the people she flies for need HER. When you focus on what you are doing, and why, then fears about how loudly you can do it fade away.

Easier said than done, of course, but I have often re-read Going Back Out myself, particularly when I felt angry about some very loud success that jarred me emotionally for the sake of the implied messages about immoral behavior being okay so long as you win. My own "Getting the Call" message has to be when Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy bought Throne Price. I had sold a couple short stories before but the Okal Rel Saga was my big dream. Alison Sinclair and I sold Throne Price to Edge late in the last millenium. At the time, the "buzz" in the writerly world was all in favor of "shorter, meaner, harder", or at least so it seemed to me. A ten novel saga about the struggle to find the common sense to stop destroying the world, and brutalizing people, in the fight between cultures for dominance, felt like a dark horse. But I had lived and labored in the Okal Rel Universe for thirty years. I wasn't interested in doing "something else". 


Now, a mere 30,000 words shy of completing a ten-novel project, with Part 8: Gathering Storm due soon, I am glad I had the courage to keep flying for my own reasons. And this is what really makes it worthwhile -- so are the readers who love my characters.

Lynda Williams, author http://www.okalrel.org/books.html http://okalrel.org/blog/ (Reality Skimming with Michelle Carraway, Tegan Lott,Richard Bartrop)http://clarionfoundation.wordpress.com/tag/lynda-williams/ (with David Lott)Opus 6 (with editor Paula Johanson)

Getting the Call: MarcyKate Connolly

Believing in ourselves can be the hardest part of being a writer. The lack of validation from legitimate sources can be a killer. I got a chance to read a couple of chapters of MarcyKate's Monstrous and the voice blew me away. She may not have know it, but I think everyone else knew this book stood out from the crowd. Once again, you have to keep up your courage because it's persistence and talent that pays off. I want to wish MarcyKate the best of luck with her submission process. I'm doing a happy dance for her, too!

First, thanks so much for inviting me to do this guest post, Michelle!

Like many other writers, I’ve spent several years in the query trenches, writing, re-writing, and submitting, all in the hopes of finding that one agent who loves my work. I’ve had more than my share of highs and lows. The 3^rd novel I queried came particularly close, garnering a large amount of requests, but in the end, no offers. So when it came time to query MONSTROUS (my 7^th book, but 4^th I’d decided to query), I had reached a point where I was paralyzed by fear.

I was absolutely (and foolishly) terrified to send out this book. I was scared to send it to my crit partners. Then once they approved, I was afraid to send it to agents. I was even nervous to enter it into blog contests (which normally I love to do!). MONSTROUS is hands down the weirdest and most challenging book I’ve written to date and I was very emotionally invested in it. The thought of it coming close and not being good enough to get an agent yet again stalled my forward momentum, despite my full awareness that I was being a complete ninny.

Then came the Writers Voice Contest in May (hosted by the lovely foursome of Brenda Drake, Cupid, Krista Van Dolzer, and Monica BW). I got up the nerve to enter and was shocked and thrilled that 3 of the judges wanted my weird little book to be on their team. By the time the contest ended and the agents had voted, I had several requests for MONSTROUS.

This was exactly the push I needed to start sending out queries. I began researching agents on my list who I thought would be a good fit with renewed gusto, but still held back a little. I queried in fits and starts and only when I was in a Go Big or Go Home frame of mind. I’d send them out late at night before I could think better of it and usually woke up the next morning thinking I was crazy to have done that. This was not my normal querying process by any means! Usually I’d send out 5-10 at a time to a range of agents so I didn’t burn through my top picks before perfecting my query. But this time, I felt confident my query and first pages were good (it was just the rest of the book I worried about!) and I ended up querying only my A-list. I was blown away by the response – I only sent out 20 queries, but my request rate was about 70%. Including the ones from contests, I had 18 requests for MONSTROUS.

But, of course, I was still getting rejections – it’s inevitable. About 6 weeks after I sent out the first batch of queries, I got an email response from an agent as I was walking home from the train station. I nearly fell over when I saw the preview of the message on my phone read “Would you be available to chat this week?” I kept telling myself she probably wanted major revisions and that she wasn’t calling to offer. But it was an offer! And she was lovely and she was excited about my book and I was pretty much on cloud nine! After I talked to Agent #1, I nudged everyone else reading my book (8 at the time) and all the outstanding queries (another 5 or so). A couple got back to me bowing out, others with requests.

One of those requests happened to be from a particular agent who I’d long considered to be someone I’d give my right arm to work with, so I was over the moon that she wanted to read MONSTROUS! I sent the manuscript off right away and she got back to me later that night to let me know how much she was enjoying it so far. She finished reading within 24 hours and emailed again, gushing about my book (!), to arrange a phone call.

That was about the time my head exploded.

Fortunately, I managed to pull myself together for our call a couple days later! Agent #2’s enthusiasm for her work, her clients’ books, and MY book completely blew me away. Add to that the fact that her suggestions for revisions were spot on and she was easy to talk to, and I had a feeling she was going to be the right agent for me.

The happy dancing officially reached epic levels (to the point where the excessive flailing was scaring my dogs)!

But I still had several agents reading and wanted to be sure I gave everyone who was interested serious consideration. You really don’t know how you’ll click with an agent until you talk to them. Out of those agents, I received another offer and had another Call with Agent #3. She was as excited about MONSTROUS as the other agents, her clients loved her just as much, and her sales record was stellar. She was even easy to talk to. I could tell she’d be a great advocate for my book.

Then came the hard part – I had to make a decision. All three agents were awesome. I felt certain they’d all work hard to sell MONSTROUS and they were all interested in helping me build a career. It was both wonderful and terrible because I’d have to say no to two of them and there’s nothing I like less than disappointing people (especially nice, awesome people).

But when it came right down to it, I kept coming back to Agent #2. I felt like we really clicked over email and the phone, and she’d made a point of keeping in contact over the course of that week. Not only did I like her ideas for revision just a little more than the others, but her level of enthusiasm was higher and I believed that would translate over during the submission process to editors. When I finally emailed Suzie Townsend to tell her I was delighted to officially accept her offer of representation, part of me was terrified it was all just a dream and she’d email back “Just kidding!”  Fortunately, that was NOT the case J We’ve been working together for the past few weeks preparing to go out on submission and she’s been absolutely fantastic!  

BIO: MarcyKate Connolly is a writer and arts administrator who lives in New England with her husband and pugs. She’s also a coffee addict, voracious reader, and recurring commuter. She blogs at her website and the From the Write Angle group blog, and volunteers as a moderator at AgentQueryConnect.com. Her work is represented by Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary & Media. Her short story “Connected” was recently published in the Spring Fevers anthology by Elephants Bookshelf Press.

LINKS:

• Website
• Twitter: @marcykate
• Goodreads
• AQConnect

Getting the Call: Suzanne van Rooyen

This week's author has a ton on her plate. Suzanne has broken into writing by heading in more than one direction, providing more proof that a boatload of talent with determination and perseverance are the key. Very cool cover, Suzanne, and a big congrats on the agent offer! I hope you'll come back again and share more details for the December release.

My journey to publication has been a bit of a whirlwind. I've always written, but never really thought of being a writer in terms of career. It was only in 2010 when I began writing Dragon's Teeth that I had any inclination of trying to publish.

What started out as a short story grew into a novel for NaNoWriMo 2010 and after another two months of daily writing, became Dragon's Teeth. I submitted my manuscript on a whim to Divertir Publishing, wanting to take the first step towards being a real writer. I expected a rejection, I hoped for some feedback, I never ever expected a publishing contract.

My almost year long journey from signing the contract to seeing my book in print taught me so much about the writing industry and about myself as I writer. I owe a huge amount of thanks to Elizabeth Harvey (my editor) and Ken Tupper (publisher) for investing in my story. It was the publication of Dragon's Teeth that made me realise that what I really wanted to be was a writer, because that's who I've always been: a storyteller.

In the wake of Dragon's Teeth, I joined the online writing community Scribophile where I continued to learn about writing as a craft and about the industry. I started following author and agent blogs, I discovered Duotrope and the world of writing no longer seemed like a magical, far away realm but something real that I could be a part of. In the past year, I've had fifteen short stories published and have gradually been stepping up the ladder towards pro paying markets.

I've also been writing, a lot! Being a musician, I understand the importance of practice; the dedication, discipline and perseverance it takes to perfect an art. I write every day, even if I only manage a couple hundred words.

After Dragon's Teeth, I wrote two other novels. Obscura Burning pretty much wrote itself in a lightning bolt of inspiration that had me abandon everything else for the two weeks it took to write out the first draft. A YA science fiction novel, Obscura Burning is about a troubled boy who finds himself tossed along the space-time continuum in the wake of tragedy. I queried agents for this novel but the feedback, while consistently positive, made me realise that my very dark and edgy novel was going to be a tricky sell for traditional publishing. I turned instead to indie publishers and within a few weeks had an offer of publication from Etopia Press. Obscura Burning is now tentatively scheduled for release December 7. 

The other novel was Daughter of the Nether, a YA mythpunk story set in a post-apocalyptic world. I entered this manuscript into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award earlier this year and never expected to end up a semi-finalist. My journey with this novel is far from over but after four months of consistent querying, I just had an offer of representation! My head's still spinning about that!

Putting my journey into a few paragraphs, makes it all sound fairly easy, but it definitely was not. The hours spent writing, the hours spent curled up in a ball of self-doubt as the rejections rolled in, the hours spent editing, revising, staring at a blank page – writing really isn't for the faint of heart, but determination and patience can pay off. It was Einstein who said, “Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work.” And any writer can attest to that!

Bio: Suzanne van Rooyen is a South African speculative fiction author currently residing in the snowy wastes of Finland. She is the author of Dragon's Teeth (Divertir Publishing, 2011) and Obscura Burning (Etopia Press, December 2012). Her short fiction has appeared in Golden Visions Magazine, Earthbound Fiction, Niteblade and several others. Although she has a Master's degree in music, she prefers writing strange tales and conjuring weird worlds, and playing in the snow with her shiba inu.

Links:

Website: http://suzannevanrooyen.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Suzanne-van-Rooyen/304965232847874

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5306442.Suzanne_van_Rooyen

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Suzanne_Writer

Getting the Call: Calista Taylor

You never know what the future will bring as Calista Taylor found out. She took a tough situation and went her own way with her steampunk writing, not only getting published, but also self-publishing, and starting her own business. Anyone in need of book covers can rely on her expertise. Congratulations to her for having her non-fiction steampunk book released next month and check out her available steampunk fiction.  

I’ll admit, my path regarding agents hasn’t exactly been a straight forward one.  I never got “the call”, but rather an email from the woman who would soon be my agent and would represent my steampunk romance and mystery, Viridis.  Unfortunately, soon after signing, the agency dissolved—not exactly what you want to hear when you’ve finally managed to land an agent.  Luckily, my agent and several others formed their own agency, and I was brought along.  Again, another unfortunate turn of events occurred six months in when the new agency decided to drop adult fiction and stick with YA and stories for a younger audience.  Part way through submissions, I found myself agentless.  Not exactly a fun situation, and I was forced to shelve that book and the second I had written in the series.

About a month later, I blogged about making a leather corset to wear to a steampunk convention.  Low and behold, an agent read it and thought he could really sell a steampunk craft book and wanted to know if I’d be interested.  Amazingly enough, without ever having to query, I found myself with a new agent, though this time it was for a genre I’d never even considered—non-fiction.  That book ending up selling, and will be available in the next month under the title, Steampunk Your Wardrobe.

In the end, with the market turning favorably towards ebooks, I decided to dust off my steampunk fiction series, and self-published it myself.  I’ll admit, it’s been a pretty amazing ride, and with my next book, Jack—A Grim Reaper Romance, I ended up half-heartedly querying a dozen agents before deciding to self-publish it myself.  Even better, and completely unexpected, was the cover design business that got started when I self-published my first series. 

Publishing can certainly be a rough and rocky road, but I’ve learned that there are many paths, and one seldom travels in a straight line.

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 You can find Calista and her fiction books at her cover creation site. Her very cool steampunk craft book is on Amazon. 

Getting the Call: Me, Michelle Hauck

Here’s a surprising turn of events, this week’s Getting the Call post is my own story. I started this series of posts at a low point in my journey. It was a time when the rejection letters piled up, and I needed a jolt of inspiration. Perhaps, somehow, I hoped reading about others’ success might rub off or maybe reveal a clue to a hidden secret. They were intended to lift my spirits and the spirits of other people, not that I believed other people would ever come to this blog. But you did.

When I started querying my first manuscript I had no clue. I didn’t know the rules of writing, of how to write a query letter, or of what made a good story. To give you some idea of the awfulness, the manuscript, an epic fantasy, was 167,000 words. My cheeks heat up just thinking of everything I did wrong. It was a flop, a disaster. I began doing research by reading agent blogs. I got help on my letter from other writers. The results didn’t improve. I ended up with three requests out of somewhere around seventy letters sent. All three were swiftly followed by rejection and, in one case, even worse news. The agent with my partial had passed away. I felt terrible.

I did the unthinkable; I shelved my baby. You read the words of other writers about how they trunked their first manuscript, but I never thought it would happen to me. It did. By now I knew Heartsouls would never work in its current state. It lacked conflict, and the characters ran wild instead of adhering to the plot. There wasn’t a nice clean stand alone ending. It needed a total rewrite. Instead I started a new story.

In this second story, another epic fantasy, I did everything right or so I thought. I kept to the plot. I understood query letters, or at least the idea of how they should work. I didn’t rush off to query my first draft. To my eternal good fortune, I found Agent Query Connect where other writers with a clue share their experience. I took advantage of the critiquing marathon for Speculative Fiction writers to improve my skill at editing and get some feedback on Kindar’s Cure. I collected a double handful of beta readers and spent months editing before sending out a query letter. Guess what happened? Kindar got three requests. Oh, it did get personalized comments. In fact, it got more of these than requests. ‘I love your concept, but …’ There was always a ‘but’.

All my research and careful preparation and I got the exactly same number of requests. Three became a taboo number. I was cursed. Those rejections kept coming in and they hurt big time. Even I noticed that I didn’t laugh or joke as much as I used to. The revise and resubmit Kindar got came back another ‘no thanks, not for me, but good luck with finding someone else to represent you’. Then the third and last full came back as a form rejection. No words of advice, just a form rejection. A few weeks later that agent left the business. Oh, God, it was happening again!

But this time there was a difference. I knew Kindar was a good story. I knew it was well written. Give up? Heck no!

I began to submit straight to publishers. And hey, a lot of them didn’t want query letters. Right away I got a request for a full. My kids thought I was nuts, running around the house in a victory lap at seven in the morning. I got other requests mixed among the rejections. My numbers were higher. I ran a percent of requests to submissions over twenty percent. Partials went to fulls overnight in one case. Still the rejections overshadowed everything else. And guess what? The requests became stuck at three. There it was again. The number of doom. Time went by and I immersed myself in my work in progress, refusing to think about Kindar.

In June a different publisher opened their submissions. Low and behold, I got another request. I did it! I passed the cursed number three to become four!

I didn’t lose the habit of checking my email like a junkie. One Sunday night, pretty late, I gave my mail one last look. The first publisher to request, Divertir, showed up in the inbox along with some more innocent letters. Crap. Do I open it first and get the bad new over, or do I save it for last and hope a little longer? I opened it first. It was short. Ah, rejection for sure. They’d been awfully busy but they wanted to let me know they’d like to publish Kindar’s Cure. What? I read it again. Then again. It kept saying the same thing! There was no victory lap. I sat there in total shock. ‘Uh, husband, they say they want to publish.” Husband wasn’t impressed. He took bad new harder than I did; he wouldn’t allow himself to get excited anymore. I don’t think he’ll believe it until the book is in his hands.

Several weeks later, I find that I’m agreeing with my husband. This good news didn’t happen to me. But it did! Divertir gave me a tentative release date and everything. I have an editor. Me, an editor. It doesn’t seem real. In fact, to be perfectly truthful, it’s been a little scary. It’s a leap whether it’s signing with an agent or accepting a publisher. You’re signing over something you created and putting it in strange hands.

The connections I made through this blog series were invaluable. I followed Terri Bruce’s and other writer’s advice before signing. I had the contract looked over by a friend who knows his stuff. I asked lots of questions. I think Divertir will be a good fit for me. They are a small place, but that makes me comfortable. They listen to what their authors think and work with the authors to make their visions came to life. I won’t get lost in a crowd there.    

I used to think getting an agent or publisher was the ultimate goal, the end all. Getting the Call would be the happy ending to the story. It’s much more. It’s a new beginning to a whole other story.    

Getting the Call: Hope Gillette

Here's the story of a new friend of mine who has been very generous with her time. Hope's first book will be releasing in August. She also writes YA fantasy and has been practicing and perfecting her craft since childhood. I wish her all the best on her upcoming book and invite her back for a release party.

I was ten when I first summoned the nerve to showcase my writing to the public. At that time, “the public” consisted of the three younger girls sitting near me at the back of the school bus. With more than an hour ride to and from school, I had taken to writing in a notebook, and one day my constant scribbling was met with curiosity by my peers.

While I was initially reluctant to read them my stories of mystical places, otherworldly beings and strong heroines, I found myself reading almost daily on the bus and running up the hill to my house to finish the next chapter for the following day.

That love of writing and the thrill of enthralling an audience kept me typing through my entire school career and into my professional life. It is a steady flow of creativity that never stops—even now that I have signed a contract for my debut novel, Journey Through Travelers’ Tower.

I wrote J3T, as I call it, to prove I could write something outside of the cookie-cutter fantasy genre. While I will always harbor a deep love of elves, dwarves, dragons, wizards, and princesses, I knew if I wanted to break into the young adult market I was going to need something unique.

During an evening thunderstorm, a story about the childhood fear of monsters evolved into a multi-dimensional world unknowingly entering a struggle between good and evil. Into this world were born Quin and Klass, two orphaned sisters with a latent ability to Read. This talent sees them through separation, battles, torture, enslavement, love, and the final triumph and union of their world.

Satisfied with the story line and the characters, I completed the manuscript in a record number of months, sent it to an editor, and polished the final copy to be sent for review.

I don’t remember getting the call from my publishing company as much as I remember receiving an email stating they enjoyed my novel and wanted to offer me a contract. I had queried publishers directly, having received advice from fellow authors to avoid the hassle of agents if at all possible. (This is something I recommend new authors research. I make no recommendation either way.)

Leery of skipping the middle man process, I queried a small sampling of publishers and was pleasantly surprised to receive interest back from the majority of them. Due to certain exclusive review policies, I selected the presses which seemed most reputable and those without a listing on Preditors and Editors!

Among those was Divertir Publishing, a small press out of New Hampshire. While the company was still growing and relatively new in the commercial world, a wonderful mention of them in Writers Digest clenched my decision to submit sample chapters.

After a refreshingly short review time, I received an email offering to publish my novel. For someone who had been writing for decades, I was speechless from the knowledge my story would one day be available to the masses. I read the contract thoroughly and then had it reviewed professionally. Content none of the provisions seemed a cause for concern, I signed on the bottom line and opened the door to professional writing.

You might think that’s where the story ends, and for many people the journey does conclude with a publisher taking over the reins on a project. For me, however, because I was an unknown author starting with a small press, I knew I had my work cut out for me.

I immediately started posting my short stories in online forums to generate a following. I submitted my writing to contests and online magazines. After placing in the top 100 in a national Writers Digest competition, I found that little slice of credibility opened up many more doors. I was able to get my work published in international circles, and as I became more confident in my writing, I was able to eventually quit my veterinary job and become a freelancer writer.

Now, as a writer for national and international companies, my name is no longer that of an obscure author, but of a woman who has a complete professional and creative writing resume.

As for my YA novel, its debut is still a dream come true for me, but I have learned to express my love of writing in so many other ways along this journey. Getting the Call changed my life unquestionably; it has touched every aspect of my personal and professional life, and I look forward to the challenges and accomplishments that are sure to come.

 Find Hope at her website. 

Getting the Call: Robert Lewis

This story gave me chills, though I can't believe he did it without beta readers. There's talent! I'm glad to welcome Robert Lewis--our first male guest Yay!-- as he shares his story. I also met Robert through Agent Query Connect. (The place to be if you write, people. Go there.) You know him there as ThrownBones. His novel, Untold Damage, releases April of 2013. I  hope he'll come back for a release party.

The Call.

            It’s actually really funny, because after over a decade of working towards getting an agent, I never really got “The Call”. I got “The Email”. My wife got “The Call”, as it came to our home in the middle of the day while I was at work. She happened to be home because she was recouping from rotator cuff surgery.

            Let me give you a little bit of history before I continue…

            Previous to the thriller that landed me my fabulous agent, Barbara Poelle, I had written an urban fantasy novel. I’d shopped it EVERYWHERE I possibly could. I literally queried like two hundred and fifty agents. Yes, you read that correctly. Only received a few requests for partials, maybe one full. All for nothing.

            About halfway through those agents, I realized I would need another book.

One day I was sitting at my desk wondering what that book would be. On the corkboard I have above my desk were two pieces of writing. One was a short story I’d placed in an online literary journal. This story was about a junkie shooting up in a confessional and it was called Needle Priest. It was my personal favorite. The other was a bit of flash fiction from the POV of a child killer as he fed his latest victim before killing her. That one was called Little Visitor. It was up there because it was THE ONLY piece of writing that I’d ever done that my wife felt had that magic “something”. I was literally sitting there looking from one to the other… junkie… child killer… junkie… child killer… junkie GOES AFTER A CHILD KILLER!

But how can I make that happen, right?

            Because he was an ex-cop.

And so Mark Mallen was born. Out of sheer desperation. After that, the book came pretty quickly. I never showed the book to anyone, really. No one ever read the drafts. I workshopped the opening chapter one time. Other than that, the only people to ever read the novel were the agents who had requested partials or fulls. And no, I do NOT recommend you do it that way. I felt I could do it because by that time I’d been writing long enough (over ten years) to feel confident enough in my inner critic. And also? Honestly? I felt in my gut that THIS one was going to be “The One”, the book that got me an agent.

            Anyway, once I was done, I went over to one of the greatest websites around for writers, Agent Query. The agent database on that site was invaluable to me. I worked like a dog on the query, and even took the plunge and used an outside editor to look it over and help me with it. I ended up using The Editorial Department. They were fantastic. It wasn’t cheap, but I really wanted to get this one right.

I started sending out queries in January 2009. I sent Barbara an email query on February 28^th, along with a partial of the first thirty pages. Barbara was on my “A” list because when I was researching her, I found a LOT that I loved. She didn’t mind turning a “maybe” into a “yes” and this worked for me as I felt that if I didn’t have a “yes” of a book on my hands, I sure as shit had a “maybe”. I also read that she had told one prospective client that she would get into a monkey knife fight to represent that client’s book. How could you NOT love her, right?

By this point, mid-March or so, I had a handful of fulls out. I nudged Barbara via email on April 30^th, using the original email so if she needed to, she could reference back to our conversation easily. And by nudge, I mean politely nudge. These are very busy people, with a stable of clients, a barn-full of manuscripts, and a warehouse of queries to read. I gave her eight weeks or so, then nudged. She emailed back that very day, thanking me for nudging her and at that time requested the full. I sent it off, feeling like this was going to maybe be good.

            May 15^th , the day it happened, was graduation day in the college department where I work. It’s literally the busiest day of the year, hands down. I was running around like a mad dog. Got a chance to check email once. I think it was sometime in the early afternoon. There was an email from Barbara, saying she’d just called her husband to cancel their dinner plans as she was loving the hell outta the book and that she would call me when she was done. Well, you can imagine how THAT made me feel, right? I gave her a very enthusiastic, though professional, response telling her that I was happy to hear she was enjoying the book, and that I was looking forward to chatting. About an hour later, as I was exiting the building to where I work to set up the champagne and food for the graduating students and their parents, my cell rings. It’s home calling. I answer, thinking that my wife needs me to pick up something on the way home to help alleviate the agony she was enduring after her operation.

            “Hey,” I said.

            “You have an agent,” she replied.

            And you know what? I almost cried, right then and there. Seriously. I mean… I’d been looking for an agent for well over thirteen years if you add in the years I’d spent writing screenplays. I’d been writing six days a week, on average forty-nine weeks a year in all that time.

Yes, I had to fight back the tears.

My wife then told me that Barbara had chatted her up a bit, and that I should check my email, which I immediately did. And there was “The Email”. I now have that email pinned to the corkboard over my desk, and have ever since that day.

That was May, 2009. It took us another 2.5 years until I got my two-book deal. And the book that landed me my agent wasn’t even the book that sold! I had to write two MORE books before we got to one that did it. One thing to always remember: a really good agent believes in you and your talent, not just the book. They want to help build your career.

One last thing: you have to play the long game here. Just assume it’s going to take a long time. That way if it doesn’t, then cool beans and you’re happily surprised. And if it does take a long time? Well, then you’ve already been prepared for that eventuality.

            My story is, if anything, a really a good example of never giving up, never giving in. And if it can happen for me, a guy who was dyslexic as a child and dropped out of high school mid-way through his second year, it can happen for anyone.

            Happy writing!

Robert Lewis is represented by Barbara Poelle of the Irene Goodman Agency. The first novel of his Mark Mallen series, titled Untold Damage, arrives 04.08.13 via Midnight Ink. 

Getting the Call: Jean Oram

     I'm so pleased to mix things up a little after the holiday week and bring you an agented non-fiction writer. The method of getting an agent is a little different for non-fiction where the proposal and your platform are so important, but The Call emotions are the same.
    Jean, it sounds like your book and blog would appeal to so many people. Especially in the summer, it is so hard to come up with ideas that get kids involved and away from the electronics. Thanks for sharing your story!

Getting The Call for my nonfiction children's 1,001 play ideas book is a bit of a long, rambling story.

How the Book Idea Came to Be:

When my daughter was about a year old I saw an idea for a bean plant teepee in a magazine. (You grow beans up a bamboo teepee frame to make a mini fort.) My daughter wasn't old enough at the time to enjoy it so I snagged it out of the mag and slapped it in a notebook.

And thus The List began. Within two days I had HUNDREDS of kids play ideas written down. They literally poured into my brain after glueing that one magazine picture in the notebook. My mom laughed and said I was writing a book. At that point I was a school librarian on maternity leave, but not a writer. A book wasn't a bad idea though.

The First Queries:

About 700 play ideas later, I typed them up in my computer and queried them straight to a publisher. Yeah. This long list with a few instructions. I got rejected. I shrugged and carried on with life. I had tried. (And I think a part of me knew the book wasn't what it should/could be yet.)

A few years later I got into writing novels. That's when I learned about query letters (what makes 'em good), how to write a bit better (okay a WHOLE lot better), what a literary agent was, etc.

After querying a few novels, I decided… I should give away my list of kids play ideas. So I whipped up a website, put some of the ideas on it and pretty much forgot about it. I didn't even publicize the poor site. I just let it languish. Oh, and I blogged about some of the ideas for awhile. Like, one a day for over a year and burned out. 

It all lacked something.

Plus, I was way too chicken to really tell people about my site and get enthusiastic about it all. Way too scared. And I needed to build a platform and put myself out there if I wanted to do this. As well, I still didn't quite know what my niche was. Play ideas, yes. But? There was something missing. And, of course, a part of me (read that: a large, secret part of me) hoped people would magically discover my site and make it that whatever it wasn't.

A Push From Friends:

Around that time a friend in the publishing world, Molli Nickell, encouraged me to query literary agents. She started sending me information on how to write a nonfiction proposal and offered to critique my proposal for me. So, I wrote one. She provided feedback and off it went to agents. I can't recall exactly how many, but it was like 10 or so. It didn't feel right to pursue it at that point.

WEbook came along and I entered some stories and then tried their querying system. I queried some fiction projects and also a few nonfiction queries for kicks. No replies. Again, shrugged and moved on with fiction work and improving my craft. The timing didn't feel right.

By now many years had passed since The List began and I was pregnant with #2. My critique partner and friend, Calista Taylor, was approached by literary agent Neil Salkind of the Salkind Agency after finding her online. He was looking for someone to write a steampunk craft book. (Coming out this fall!) She signed with him and got a book deal in a matter of days and then asked him if he'd be interested in my project. (Got to love friends who believe in you!)

He told her to ask me to send a query. So I sent off a query as well as my (updated) proposal in case he was interested. (Meanwhile I was worried how this was all going to pan out since I knew I could end up on months of bed rest and possible a lengthy hospital stay with this pregnancy--what was I going to do if this whole book thing worked out?)

He was. Within five days we had a signed contract for representation.

Getting The Call:

Neil replied to my query within a day or two (with apologies for taking so long if you can believe it) and asked if he could call me. That morning he had to delay the call by a few minutes. Why? He was selling a book. (Good omen? I dunno, but I like it!)

It was strange. I wasn't really nervous. I was calm and felt almost like it wasn't real. My mom was over working on the stained glass piece she had made me for my birthday when Neil called to discuss my project. I wouldn't let myself believe that he might offer to represent me.

We chatted for about 10 minutes and in that time he totally pinned my project in the bigger market and what he saw happening in the world of parenting. It was incredible. It was inspiring. It was like someone cranked the shutters on my mind all the way open. (I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this and that he still saw the potential in my lame and misguided query.)

During the call I couldn't think of any questions to ask. And those that I did I ask, I think I asked twice. Everything he said just made sense. Plus he was way ahead of me. He was already brainstorming foreword authors and had a new title in mind. Did I have any thoughts on what we could add to the title?

Um… Uh? Hello brain? Any thoughts?

It was like I had been ambling along down the sidewalk and he'd zoomed by in a speeding a car and grabbed my hand. Problem was my (pregnant) brain was still back there ambling on the sidewalk, struggling to waddle fast enough to leap back into a position where it could do some thinking.

There wasn't much for me to say or to ask, but I felt I had to say something. The call doesn't last 5 minutes! (He offered to represent me in the first five.) And how do you accept? What do you say? What words do you use? I accept you because you complete my project? You are the missing piece?

The poor guy probably thought I was mental. My mind was galloping with all these new thoughts and my mouth felt like it needed to move!

But I didn't gush. I was professional--if a little slow sounding.

After The Call:

The big thing about The Call was this: Neil understood the vision I had for my book. He shared it, but also saw it in relation to what was going on in the world around us. He got it more than I did! And suddenly I could see what my project really was and how it could make a difference in the world.

I was inspired.

This. Could. Happen.

I went upstairs after the call (still a bit stunned around the edges) and said to my mom, "I think I have a literary agent. I have an agreement to sign." And then I sat down, watched her work on the stained glass on the dining room table. (And later went and made notes, printed out the agreement, signed it, and sent it back.)

Now:

It's been a year and a half since The Call. In that time we've come very, very close to a publishing contract in a very crowded and specific market. In that time I have learned A TON! Currently, I am updating my proposal. (Neil provided all sorts of great insight and tips on how to improve that 54 page document for our first go 'round and now I am adding things in that I have done in the past year and a half.) We plan to hit the editors again this fall, if not sooner. Wish me luck!

Thank you Michelle for allowing me to share my story on your blog. And thank you to Neil for all his hard work. Here's to more editor queries this fall!

BIO: Jean Oram is a mother to two healthy kids--and didn't end up on more than a day of bed rest after all. Wahoo! She loves to write and is currently working on breaking into the magazine market to help expand her audience and nonfiction platform. She loves to ski, play, climb trees, read, moderate for her writing friends over on www.agentqueryconnect.com, pin play ideas on Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/jeanoram), talk play with parents on Facebook (www.facebook.com/Itsallkidsplay), tweet funnies and play articles on Twitter (www.twitter.com/kidsplay) as well as blogging about silly play and other great fun things for kids on her website and blog (www.itsallkidsplay.ca). She also has a blog about writing (www.jeanoram.com).

Getting the Call: RC Lewis

I'm so glad to bring you a site moderator from Agent Query Connect, RC Lewis, one of the bosses who snap fingers to keep people in line and answer questions. (Just kidding on the finger snapping. She goes for the toes.) Once again, AQC is the place to hang out to rub shoulders with the agented and famous. RC writes YA, and I'm certain we will be hearing more news from her in the not distant future. What a fabulous author head shot, by the way. I love the black and white.

I've dubbed the day I got The Call the best-worst day ever. It was awesome in the end, but I thought it'd kill me.

It was a Wednesday. I had a full day of work at school, and I was also looking for a new job out of state, so I had two phone interviews scheduled—one during my morning prep time and one during lunch. I also had to sit on an interview panel for an applicant to be my replacement in the afternoon, and Wednesdays meant staying at school until five. Lots of end-of-the-school-year things to do, too, so I already knew it'd be a busy day.

Just before the end of my morning prep time (and that first phone interview went nicely, thank you), I got an email from one of eight agents who had my full. She wanted to know if there was a time we could chat.

Commence panic mode.

After a little back and forth, we decided she'd call me at seven that evening. Plenty of time for me to get home, get settled, and carry out a professional phone call. I proceeded to tell myself it might not be THE Call—some agents like to call and hash out possible revisions, get a feel for the writer without necessarily offering representation, right?—and carried on teaching my physics class.

The rest of the school day was semi-normal, if hectic. No substitute showed up when I was supposed to go sit on that interview panel, so there was a bit of running around. The interview was long, and I didn't get much done after school, but finally I hit the road to head home.

Major backup on the way to the freeway. A traffic light at a major intersection was out, making it a four-way (well, more like twelve-way) stop. No problem, just delayed me maybe ten minutes. Onto the freeway!

MEGA backup. They decided to start a major road resurfacing project that day, during rush hour. This was a much bigger delay. I should've gotten home just after six. I walked in the door at 6:52.

I took a deep breath, kicked off my shoes, and answered the phone when it rang.

The Call was great. We talked about the manuscript—what she loved, questions she had. We talked about what I want to be as a writer and how she works as an agent. We talked for over an hour, and I've probably forgotten half the conversation. (I do remember that my critique partner texted me five minutes before we finished to say, "Are you STILL on the phone???")

For me, it turned out to be The Calls. After notifying other agents (and ending up with a total of eleven fulls out), the following Tuesday became Agent Phone Call Day. I talked to four more agents that day alone—one of them cold-called me during my prep time, which was cool, but startling.

In the end, I signed with the agent who offered first (Jennifer Laughran). Not because she was first. A couple of the others made it REALLY difficult for me to decide, and I had to think hard through pros, cons, and what I really thought would be the best fit.


You can find RC at twitter or her blog, Crossing the Helix, besides AQC.

Getting the Call: Amber Leah Brock

If there is one thing to be learned from these posts, it's the value of persistence. I'm glad to welcome a new friend and writer of historical fiction, Amber Brock, who has this quality in abundance. She wasn't afraid of tweaking her manuscript until it sparkled enough to catch an agent. And she also names her picture file "Me" which means we think alike. Her novel sounds like my kind of story, I'll be looking for it on shelves soon.

In October 2011, I “finished” my historical novel, Blessed Among Women.  I thought, hey, this is just like what’s in bookstores!  I need to get this to a publisher!  Then I did a little research and found out that you don’t send a novel to a publisher, silly, you send a query letter to a literary agent.  So I sat down to write a query letter.  And boy, did I bomb.  I’m deeply ashamed to admit that I went after some of the top agents in the field with a poorly-written query letter and a 55k word “novel”.  When their assistants got done wiping tears of laughter from their eyes, I got form reject after form reject.

So I dug back into the novel and made additions that enriched the story, and then completely re-wrote the beginning when my beta readers made the comment that it was a good novel “once they got into it”.  To me that said the beginning was too slow, so I concentrated on my strong suit (dialogue) to make the opening punchier.  Then I joined the “Where Past is Prologue” critique group on Agent Query Connect and learned invaluable lessons. 

In January I started the querying process again and got my first requests for pages.  Hooray!  Then I got form rejects on pages.  Ouch.  So I set it aside—stepped back, worked on other projects.  I thought I had shelved the novel, but it kept whispering to me from my Documents folder.  I read Writing the Breakout Novel, On Writing, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers and, for the thousandth time, Bird by Bird.  Then I thrashed my novel into submission based on what I learned.  I attacked my query with the same fervor, and then started sending again in March. 

That’s when things really started to happen. 

I started getting requests—I was still getting rejections, but now they were personalized, with real suggestions to help my novel, and invitations to re-submit.  I incorporated those suggestions and then sent another batch.  If it sounds like I sent a lot of queries, it’s because I sent a lot of queries.  Over 130.  Maybe even way over 130.  130 is when I stopped counting.  If you can’t tell, I’m deeply stubborn.  Plus I had tons of support from my husband and family.  I’m glad I kept going!

So I sent my just-good-enough query plus the first 30ish pages to Clare Wallace of the Darley Anderson Agency (among others—I sent out batches of ten).  Within a couple of days, I got an email from the agency’s editor, the delightful Vicki LeFeuvre.  She and Clare and read the first part and wanted a synopsis and a full on exclusive. When they read the full they approached me with a suggestion for revision that would draw the novel more to the “faction” side of historical fiction (basically, they wanted me to draw in more of the true historical element that inspired the novel).  I considered it, decided I’d give it a shot and see how I felt about the changes. 

Well, they’re the experts for a reason.  The suggestions strengthened the novel enormously.  I sent the revision and got an email from Clare a couple of weeks later.  I was actually standing in the grocery store when I opened the email!  She said she wanted to talk about representation.  Let me tell you, there is no better feeling than standing in the frozen foods aisle reading those words.  Several days later my phone was ringing and I was trying to keep my cool. 

We talked for about thirty minutes, but I knew immediately that she was the right one.  Her vision for the novel perfectly aligned with mine, and she was excited to hear about the other projects I’m working on.  She sent me the contract later that afternoon.  I haven’t stopped celebrating since!

Author bio:

Amber Leah Brock is a sometime Spanish teacher who moonlights as a novelist.  She lives in Atlanta with her English teacher husband and their three crazy rescue dogs.  Her novel BLESSED AMONG WOMEN is loosely based upon the unique love triangle between Henri II of France, his wife Catherine de’ Medici, and his lover Diane de Poitiers.  You can follow her on twitter at @AmberLBrock.  She whines about writing at allmyfriendsarepretend.blogspot.com.