How I Got My Agent

Yes, I signed my agent contract in my bathrobe. It was either this or in the woods. Or on a boat in the mangroves. There is no middle ground with me. It’s either abundant coziness or mud and mosquitoes. This was on January 23rd, eight days before my 33rd birthday. I have moments when it still doesn’t feel real.

Let me tell you how I got here, because I know I’ve read and reread a million posts like this to keep me going when querying felt impossible. I started querying The Language of the Mountains at the beginning of October, 2020. It was my third venture into the query trenches, and my fourth novel. I queried a fantasy novel in 2014 when I was living on a mountain in the Sierra Nevada. I had written that book while surrounded by nine feet of snow. It was as close to writing in a vacuum as you can get. No betas, no CPs, nothing. I didn’t know the first thing about what I was doing.

In 2015, I moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The grocery store was five minutes away instead of two hours, and now I had a local community center that offered groups and clubs. I joined a writing group, and each week we got together, brewed some tea, and read our work aloud around a dining room table. I gained a second family and learned a ton, and by 2018 I had the first two books completed in a fantasy trilogy. I went back into the query trenches. I had more requests this time, but still wasn’t hitting the mark. I ended up shelving the project after about 80 rejections.

Around the same time I was querying that fantasy trilogy, I was sitting on a return flight to Boston after a three-day primitive weapons training for my day job, and a new idea popped into my head. I started scratching out notes right away, “group of women surviving together in the mountains during post-apocalypse. Rockies, Colorado. Use black powder weapons because they’re easier to find compared to rifles/handguns. They hunt elk for their food. Influences: Jeremiah Johnson. Lonesome Dove, but with all women.”

The Language of the Mountains began to take shape, slowly at first. Then in December of 2018, the government shut down over a proposed border wall with Mexico (one day, when you read the book, you’ll see how my reality at that time influenced the world-building significantly.) I was furloughed from my day job for 37 days. I spent the first week wandering around the house in my jammies in the midst of a mild existential crisis, then I sat down and wrote 30k of what I lovingly called my “feminist, post-apocalyptic, dystopian western.” In March of 2019, I was selected for a job in South Florida, and took a hiatus to make the move to Key Largo and learn my new position, but I got back to work on the book by the fall. By the time I was ready to query in October of 2020, I was on my fourth draft, and had received and implemented feedback from two betas and two CPs. (I mention this because I like to scream from the mountaintops on how important it is to have good betas and critique partners in your corner. It makes all the difference.)

When I started querying, I had four full requests almost immediately. The vibe on this trip into the query trenches was different right away. All four of those fulls ended up in really nice rejections, but with not a lot of constructive feedback. I grappled with whether this meant the book was actually good and it just hadn’t landed in front of the right agent yet, or if this meant the book had so much wrong with it the agents didn’t have the energy to tackle feedback at all. One of the agents did take the time, however, to say that she believed the book would be successful and she would be rooting for me. I hung onto those words and kept querying. I got another flurry of full requests just before the holidays, and then everything went quiet except for a smattering of form rejections. By early January, I still had four fulls out, but I had received enough form rejections that I was beginning to consider major revisions.

Then, I was sitting on the couch watching TV with my husband one night, and a Twitter notification popped up on my phone. One of the agents with my full followed me on Twitter. My heart started pounding, but at the same time I kept telling myself it might mean nothing. But midday the next day, an email came through from that agent requesting a phone call. We jumped on the call that night and had a very nice chat, including an offer of rep. I let all the other agents in the running know, and over the next week I researched the offering agent. On the last day of the deadline, I received another offer of rep from Lindsay Guzzardo of Martin Literary Management. I was ready to make a giant white board list of pros and cons to help me make the decision, but after a phone call with Lindsay that evening, I knew my mind was made up. We clicked on a whole other level than I had with the first offering agent. Her vision for my book was so clear right from the start, and she had picked up on the Wild West feel I had been going for in the book all along.

I ended up sending about 110 queries for The Language of the Mountains. My request rate was 11 percent. Because I started out with so many full requests right off the bat, my confidence was bolstered, and I queried aggressively to get this book in front of the right agents. Had those early requests happened to come later, I probably would have queried slower and in smaller batches. Would it all have worked out the same? Who knows. Querying success varies so much based on the time of year, the happenings in the world, and so many other things, so I’m not telling you this so you can compare numbers or strategies. What worked for me might not work for you. But I am telling you this so you will keep trying. The big takeaway among all these “how I got my agent” posts is that you have to keep learning and you can’t give up. If it doesn’t seem like it’s working, sometimes you just have to shelve a book and try again. Expand your writing network. Beta-read for friends. With every step, you equip yourself a little better for success. Also, celebrate EVERY milestone. My husband and I popped a bottle of champagne (ok, maybe two) that weekend I signed with Lindsay. And then we left an unopened bottle in the fridge, waiting for the day the book sells. Fingers crossed.