Victory Dance

Eight months ago I wrote a post called ‘Holding Out for a Blue Moon Moment’. This told of my first experiences approaching agents, and most of it was about the inevitable rejection that’s such a huge part of any writer’s life. Four months later I wrote about my journey continuing as I began querying a new book. Now, eighteen months after I sent my first query, I’m finally writing the post I’ve had my heart set on since I started writing about four years ago … it’s the ‘How I Got My Agent’ post!

When I was querying I would trawl the internet for articles, blogs and podcasts of these stories of perseverance in the face of rejection, and the resulting successes. They say there are only seven types of story, so I’m not sure which type these are … perhaps Overcoming the Monster, or The Quest? Although moments in mine have also swerved between Comedy and Tragedy too. I devoured ‘How I Got My Agent’ stories looking for any glimpse of a tip that might help me to secure my own agent, but mainly because it just felt so wonderful to read about someone Just Like Me who had written a story and then been bowled over when an actual industry professional sat up and took notice of them. I think we all identify with these stories, just imagining what it would feel like if it was us.

After taking a ‘Writing for Children’ course with the Writers Bureau, I began querying my middle-grade fantasy in January 2021. I sent thirty-five queries (in batches) between January and November, had no full requests, and the rejections I did receive were all form – not a single personalised comment in any of the responses with a reason for the rejection, or mention of what they liked, if anything.

Luckily, (and I highly recommend this to stave off querying madness) by November I’d already finished the first draft of my next book, this one a psychological thriller. I also took two more online writing courses, this time with Curtis Brown. The first was ‘How to Write a Psychological Thriller’ which had some great videos from the wonderful Erin Kelly on how to hook readers and execute twists. The second course was ‘Edit and Pitch your Novel’, which had bucket loads of information on what agents are looking for and how to write query letters.

The other thing I did was to get a full manuscript assessment from Faber Academy. The report they sent me was thorough, and packed full of specific areas I should work on, and edits that would help polish it up. However, the main thing the Faber report gave me was confidence. It was a very encouraging report, and my reader said the book was compelling – this meant I felt, if not blindingly optimistic, then at least partially confident re-entering the querying trenches.

And then came the tough part. I sent out my first batch of queries … and got nothing. More silence, and more form rejections. However, one of the rejections said ‘We loved your writing and would like to read what you write next, but we just didn’t feel the hook and premise were quite there this time.’ So, armed with this tiny nugget of a tip, I rewrote my query letter with a punchier hook, and made my premise sound more dramatic. I also got rid of my prologue (because I kept reading that agents don’t like prologues) and condensed my first chapter. Then I sent out batch two … and got more silence and rejections.

This was so frustrating because of the positive feedback I’d had. I felt that after being on cloud nine after my report, I was still doing something wrong, but that this was a sick puzzle where I wasn’t allowed any clues as to what The Wrong Thing was.

Silence is one of the hardest things to deal with when querying, so I decided to book an agent 121 with Jericho Writers, and chose Philippa Sitters from DGA agency. We had a fifteen minute chat and she told me ways I could tighten my first chapter further, and also that I wasn’t talking about my book enough in my query letter. This surprised me because all the submission guidelines I’d seen kept saying ‘Don’t go on about your book, keep it to one paragraph, keep it to three sentences.’ But I took her advice, and extended my short paragraph to two paragraphs, and upped the drama even further. Another interesting thing (which perfectly illustrates how subjective this all is) was when I told her I’d deleted my prologue she said, ‘Oh … I quite like prologues.’ So, I did what my gut was telling me, and I added my prologue back in (I quite like prologues too) and sent out my catchy-hooked, dramatic-blurbed, condensed-chaptered, newly-prologued query to batch three of agents … and the next day I got a full request.

Now, the nature of querying is that you can never know if anything you changed was what worked. Perhaps this agent would have requested my first batch query, or my second. Who knows? But this was when I got my First Ever Full Request and I was walking on air, spontaneously sobbing, and hopping from foot to foot around the house in a bizarre victory dance. I sent off the full, then emailed the agents I was waiting to hear back from, and got an immediate second full request from another agent in batch three. Two full requests!!! The dancing continued.

Then I had a think and wondered whether I should be sending out fresh queries, letting them know in my letter that there were two agents considering my work. Is that a thing? Do people do that? I took to Google, and (as with everything querying) there are people saying do, there are people saying don’t – there is so much conflicting advice.

So I decided to just go for it, and this is where something interesting happened. I was browsing Jericho Writers and I came across an agent who was the second agent I ever queried, right at the top of batch one, with my middle-grade novel about eighteen months ago. She was the children’s agent Jo Williamson from Antony Harwood Ltd. I looked twice, because I thought I’d not set my filters correctly … I was only looking for agents interested in psychological thrillers, not children’s books. But there it was, under the blurb – Jo was now expanding her list to include women’s fiction and thrillers. I’d never heard back from her after my middle-grade query, but I sent off this new one and was completely caught off guard to receive a full manuscript request from her the next day saying she couldn’t wait to read the rest of it as she was dying to know what happened.

So I sent it off, heart in mouth, and two days later she emailed to say she’d blocked out her diary, read it in one sitting, and wanted to meet me. The next day we were sitting outside The Boaters Inn on the river in Kingston, sun streaming down, barely pausing for breath as we chatted about my book, her clients, the industry, my new ideas and hopes for my career, and most importantly … the fact that she wanted to represent me. I floated home in a bubble of euphoria, and I think I’ve been living in that bubble ever since, occasionally breaking out for a quick hop of delight, or a victory dance around the kitchen!