I have a book deal!

If you have ADD, are twitchy from caffeine, or due to long term twitter exposure have trouble w/ thoughts longer than 140 characters, read

The Short Version I have a book deal!  My books about a young woman working for the Fairy Godfather are going to become “in-your-hands” “on-the-shelf” books, courtesy of Ace. 

If you are deep in the Query Trenches, waiting for contest results, refreshing to look for form rejections, or doing the dance of desperation while on submission, read

The Long, Long Version

The tale of how this came to be doesn’t start with that story, or even the story before that.  It starts with a story about a flock of chickens.  Talking chickens, stuck somewhere in the mountains, attempting a migration home.

I liked to think of it as “Warriors, only with chickens.”  The cunning among you will immediately spot a flaw in my clever plan:  Chickens are well equipped to become dinner, and poorly equipped to do anything else.  There’s a reason why you never read a headline that say “Chicken kills family of six, eats them with gravy.” 

You’ll also never read about “Flock of Chickens learn to pick locks, break out of government lab and go on rampage.”  My kids have a flock whose most aggressive act is to make us breakfast.

But I wrote the story.

And when my magnum opus was done, I figured that while I waited for agents, editors, and Hollywood to form a rioting mob in front of my house, I might as well keep writing.

So I wrote about vile monsters, genetic tampering, and misshapen, un-socialized abominations.  Also, middle school students.  When that was done, I had the good sense to sit on it.

See, for reasons I couldn’t quite put my beak on, the chicken story didn’t garner rave requests. It gathered form rejections faster than a strawberry grows mold. Eventually, I gave up on it.

While I tried to figure out how to prevent the same problem that killed the chicken story from plaguing my new next-best-seller, I kept writing.  One evening, I sat down at a fresh Word document, and in that desert of white, I typed two lines:

“I’ve got it, Grimm.”
“I’ll believe that when you do.”

Who were these people?  What was she after?  Why?  Everything grew out from there.  When I had a fair chunk of the story ready to roll, I took it to the online writer’s workshop I use, Critique Circle.  There, critique partners gently informed me that while the voice had potential, the manuscript needed love and attention.

Write what you love.

Write the story you want to read, but can’t find.

Those two bits of old advice made all the difference in the world.  Why?  Because the number of times I read my own story as I edited it would amaze you.  I honestly have no idea how many drafts I went through, but the novel slowly passed through the stages every novel does, becoming something I wasn’t just happy with, I was proud of.

Into the Trenches
So one October day, I caught myself editing a chapter, and making a change…then changing it back in a second pass.  For me, that’s always been the definition of “done” – when my changes don’t make it better, just different.

So I researched the dreaded query letter, conjured up what I thought was a great query, and sent it out to my five favorite agents.

One day, when I’m braver, I’ll post that original query letter.  It’s a poster child for “how to never write a query letter.”  Grammar errors.  Rhetorical questions.  Backstory in the QUERY letter.

I gathered a set of form rejects, and deserved every single one of them.

So I went to Absolute Write and spent time in Query Letter Hell.  The letter I produced with their feedback avoided all the pitfalls of the first one…but lost all the voice.  I chose to believe the advice of the experts there, and sent out another round.

This gathered me a few partial requests, which turned into full requests, but no offers. 

Once more, I sat down and wrote a new query.  I took some of the previous query and added the voice that I hoped would hook them.  And about that time, Liana Brooks posted about a contest, hosted by Brenda Drake.

Winners, Losers, and Also-Rans
Not Pitchwars.  Trick or Treat with Agents.  I wrote a logline, I wrote a summary, and I entered the TTWA contest.

I didn’t make the cut. 
So I entered another one.
Also didn’t make the cut.

It’s tempting to look at those and say I failed at each of those contests.  That’s true if you go by “Did you make it to the agent round/did you get requests/did you get an agent” metric.  Another good way to look at it was that with each entry, an opening I swore I couldn’t improve got sharper, more focused.

In December I entered yet another contest, Pitchmas, by Jessa Russo and TamaraMataya.  This one stands out because it was the first point at which I heard “I love it” from an agent.  That agent wasn’t ready to offer representation yet, but the fact that someone said “I love it” without a qualifying “but” did wonders for my soul.

And now we come to Pitchwars.

For those of you who don’t know, Brenda lives to cross Survivor and Pitch contests.  Each contest is similar to, but has variations from, the previous one.  I’m still waiting for her to have one where contestants get sent to live on a desolate rock, writing pitches in the sand for the agent flyover.  “I’m sorry, but PLAESE SEND HELF is not right for my list” and “I’m seeing a lot of SOS submissions lately” will be the most common response.

In Pitchwars, you applied to three mentors, who would pick a mentee to help.  They’d polish the pitch, work with you on your manuscript, then, come that happy day, your pitch and opening pages would be hosted on a blog.

I applied to Summer Heacock, Becca Weston, and Tina Moss.

I didn’t win.

Well, that’s not exactly true.  I wasn’t a primary choice.  However, Tina Moss chose me as one of her alternates.  And being made of ninja awesomeness, (seriously, she could kill me with her pinky), she helped me polish my pitch to a shine.

Pitchwars day came, and I personally contributed the majority of the load on Summer’s blog.

From that, I got five requests.  One of them from Pam van Hylckama Vlieg.  I can honestly tell you I checked and rechecked the spelling on her name at least five times before pressing send on the mail to her.  I had “Ms. Vlieg,” “Ms. Hylckama”, and “Ms. Van” as best guesses.  Tip for those who might query her – it’s all of those:  “Ms. van Hylckama Vlieg”

A few days later, the first agent, from the pitchmas contest got ahold of me.  She wanted to represent me!  More than anything, I wanted to say yes right then.  The problem was, I had full manuscripts out to about eight other people at that point.  So I reluctantly said “I need to notify the other agents with my manuscript.”

And I wrote out a letter to each of them.  For the record, if you are looking for how to do this, just reply to their request mail (so they know who you are and what this is in regards to) and say “I’d like to notify you that I have an offer of representation.  I’d like to reply by [date].” 

Some people bowed out immediately.

Some never responded.

Some said “We need to talk as soon as you are available.”

Pam van Hylckama Vlieg responded to my mail and said “I’ll read it over the weekend.”

The Call(s)

If you are a writer querying, it’s easy to develop this idea that agents are distant, mythical creatures like unicorns or honest politicians, combined with Wizard of Oz style giant flaming oracle.  Writers approach, tie their queries to a sacrificial goat or two, and lob it over the fence.

Flaming rejections come back.  Occasionally, a revise-and-re-sacrifice request.

The more I talked with agents, the more they seemed like actual human beings.  These names on the other end, they belonged to actual people.  Different people.  With different styles, but actual people.  Some of whom I had great discussions with, some of whom I talked to and both of us said “Is this really going to work?  No, I don’t think so.” 

By the time Pam mailed saying she’d like to talk, I thought I’d gotten over my agent-aphobia.

I thought wrong.

See, I’d read all those “Questions to ask during the call” posts.  I had lots of questions.  She had lots of answers.  I patted myself on the back for being prepared.  The problem came at the end of the phone call.

I can read z80 machine code in raw hex, despite being two decades removed from writing it.  I can occasionally recall my daughter’s name, and I’ve had her for nearly eighteen years.  When it came time to end the call, my mind went blank. 

I stared at the cell phone, trying to remember exactly what it was I was supposed to say to end the call.  Seconds passed--and it came to me.  I practically shouted “BYE” and punched the button to hang up.  A millisecond later, the part of my brain that attempts to understand social conventions kicked in.

I panicked. 

Of course, I couldn’t call her back just to say goodbye in a way that didn’t mark me as a freak.
Fast forward to the end of the week.  After more calls, more email, and more discussions, I came to Thursday night worried.  Not because I had to make a decision – that’s life.  Agents are like Highlanders: There can be only one.  I worried because I liked the people I’d talked to, and suddenly I felt a tiny hint of what it’s like sending rejections out to people.

Sometimes, it feels like the whole query process boils down to shouting “Pick me!  Pick me!”  Here I had people saying the same thing to me, and I felt bad for the people I didn’t choose.  Friday morning, I wrote out the response mail to each person.  Most of them I rewrote several times.  One I wrote at least six versions of. 

The final mail I wrote to Pam, saying that I was delighted to accept her offer of representation and looked forward to working with her.  That one I was happy to write.

That’s my agent story.

Life, Continued

As a writer, it’s easy to look to that next big milestone as “The thing we’re waiting on” and forget that life isn’t then.  It is now. 

The day after I accepted Pam’s offer of representation, my manuscripts did not, to my surprise, complete themselves.  I opened a WIP and said “The editing elves didn’t creep in last night.  I wonder if they know I got an agent yet.”

So I sat down and wrote, just like I’d done every day before.  And I edited, just like I’d done every day before.  Soon, I feel back into a pattern.  Write some.  Edit some.  Critique for my CPs.  Relax and live life.  In the meantime, Pam & Laurie Mclean launched Foreword Literary, aiming to create an agency that kept up with the changing face of publishing.

One morning I woke up to find a spreadsheet shared with me – a submission spreadsheet.

For those of you querying, it often looks like querying is the end of the process. 

This is fundamentally untrue.

Your agent knows the market.  He or she knows the imprint, knows the editors, who is buying what, who has said “I’d like a story like that,” and who has recently passed on similar stories.  From their knowledge of the market, the agent draws up a submission list. 

Think of it like querying on steroids.  If you have a list of agents in query tracker that you want to query, the submission sheet works just like that.

The submissions process is where your agent attempts to sell your work to editors, and it begins with a submission letter, which despite its name has nothing to do with 50 Shades of anything.  In the submission letter, the agent attempts to garner editor interest the same way your query letter worked.

If the editor accepts, the agent send on the manuscript.

And here we hit the truth that sent chills down to my toes:  A “no” at this stage ends the submission of that manuscript, to that editor.  There are no do-overs on submission.  So you can bet I spent the first couple days refreshing that document over and over

When editors agreed to read, I squealed with joy.

When editors passed, I struggled to ignore it.  Just as I didn’t rewrite everything from scratch based on form rejections, I didn’t want to make changes without knowing what to change and why.  So I waited.

I also wrote. 

“Free Agent” was out on sub.  “Special Agent” was with my critique partners, and “Double Agent” was a lump of words on my hard drive, a lump that I continued to work on. 

I was in a meeting when that first mail notification came in: “Editor is going to get back to us next week.”  I somehow managed to avoid cackling and spinning around in my chair, neither of which is accepted in business meetings.

The next mail, that an editor had taken it to acquisitions, also came in during a meeting.  Also required much restraint.

Now, one key of Submission Club is “You do not talk about Submission Club.” 

So I had all this exciting news…but I couldn’t tell anyone.  Sure, I could tell my wife and kids, but that discussion went like “I’m on submission.  No, I don’t mean I’m submitting insurance claims.  No, it doesn’t mean that either.  You know what?  Never mind.”

Telling coworkers wouldn’t help either.  “I’m on submission.  No, that’s not a hash table algorithm.  It’s about my book.  No, it has nothing to do with 50 Shades of Grey.  You know what?  Never mind.” 

Offers, Auctions, and Deals

Then came offers.

This, by the way, was the point at which I became extremely happy to have an agent to partner with.  That’s the key here.  Agents aren’t some magical editing fairy.  I am responsible for the quality of my manuscripts.  They aren’t some surefire ticket to instantaneous riches. 

A good agent is a partner, one you can trust to explain details, rights, how each interaction of rights versus money works.  Jennifer Laughran’s post on the big ball of rubber bands is good reading for this.  I recommend reading it.  Pam explained each offer, who it came from, what that meant, what it entailed. 

And though I trust her, I absolutely believe in “Trust but verify.”  So I reached out to people I knew who had been through this.  I listened to them as well.  I noted with satisfaction that their explanations backed up Pam’s to the hilt.

Then came the big offer, the preempt.  If you are asking yourself “What exactly is a preempt?” fear not.  I asked myself exactly that.  When a book goes out on submission, you really would like to get at least one offer for it.  If not, it’s a book you can’t sell traditionally.

Better than one offer would be two, in which the agent may work to create an auction situation, where different houses offer different things.  This auction situation can go back and forth for a while, rights, dollars and deals all being bandied back and forth.

Again, I’m delighted I didn’t have to do this – my tendency would be to say “YES!” to the very first offer.  Even if the offer was “Print books to be printed on the skin of author, in his own blood.  Author pays for tattoo services, skin grafts, and provides his own blood transfusions.” 

That’s why I’m an author, not an agent.

On Thursday, Pam and I spoke on the phone and agreed that we had an offer in hand we should absolutely accept.  In a pre-empt, the book goes the offering editor, and everyone else gets told “sorry.” 

I took the family out to dinner.  I sat at my computer and ground out my daily word count because the only constant here is that regardless of where I was at in the process, I had to write.  And then I did the hardest thing of all.

Not saying a word, until now.

That part is over.  I have a book deal for all three books of the Agency series, telling the story of a young woman, the Fairy Godfather, and her quest to find that mythical happily ever after.

Free Agent (and friends!) will be coming as mass market paperback from Ace books.  You can read the press release here - JC Nelson lands three book deal with penguin-ace.

Hug and Learn Time

While I don’t usually hug, I do make an effort to learn.  Here’s a list of things I learned from this, hoping that I can save you some time if you don’t already know:

1. This is a business.  You are saying to an agent “You and I can make money together.”  Bring the best manuscript you can bring and be professional.
2. This is a subjective business.  I have rejections from several agents, a few who said “Sorry, this is great but I can't sell it.”  Were they wrong?  Not if they couldn’t get 100% behind my book and love it the way I do.
3. An agent is a partner, not a Fairy Godfather.  When you go looking for one, look at it like that.  I read posts from people talking about querying their dream agent.  Your dream agent is the one who believes in your book and has the skills, experience, and contacts to give it the best shot possible.
4. Be respectful to everyone.  Publishing is a small business.  People talk.  Be the one they talk about saying “I’d love to work with them,” not the “You’ll never guess which freak I got mail from” person.
5. Keep your mouth shut when necessary.
6. There’s more to get from a contest than the #1 spot.  I connected with other writers, sharpened my opening, and made friends with people, people I listen to and learn from.
7. Write the book you love.  I did.  To this day I like reading my story, which is good, since I’m betting there are big changes and hard work ahead.
8. “Have a good day, goodbye” or “It was a pleasure speaking with you, goodbye” are both acceptable ways to end a call.