How I Got My Agent
How I Got My Agent
Apologies in advance: this will be long and overly detailed!
Feel free to skip to the end for my query stats and the version of my query that ultimately got me my agent.
My Writing Journey
I’ve read a lot of How I Got My Agent blog posts over the last few months, and I noticed that a lot of people had one of two things in common: either they’ve been writing their entire lives, or they started their first book during COVID.
Neither of those applied to me, really! Growing up, I was not a writer. Honestly, I never even considered it an option. I loved my English classes, and I was a huge reader, but I spent my childhood as a competitive acrobat (a whole story for another time) and, frankly, never thought I could be good enough to be a writer.
During COVID, I also started graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania to get my Masters of Integrated Product Design. I started Fall 2020 and graduated Spring 2022, and during this time, I had zero thoughts of actually writing a book.
But it was during grad school that I started reading again. My early to mid-twenties were spent in a corporate haze (I worked as a tech consultant which is... a lot) and I lost a lot of myself in that time. Grad school opened that creative part of my brain up again and got me thinking.
I started reading more. And more. In 2022 alone, I had read close to 700 books. And in that process, it made me realize... maybe I could write my own.
Granted, I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. But I had had an idea in the back of my head for a very long time, to use fantasy as a way of expressing my lifetime struggle with my mixed-race identity.
So in the late summer of 2022, I started writing my very first book, RISING TIDES.
And I immediately did a lot of things wrong. I ended the book on a massive cliffhanger (I’m still sorry to my early beta readers!). Most importantly, I couldn’t easily and succinctly say what the book was about. There were so many different layers, so many subplots, so many things I was trying to do that it was hard to distill the story down to a single thread.
But I learned so, so much with RISING TIDES. Originally, I intended to self-publish. After all, the huge bulk of the 700 books I read in 2022 were indie books. So, so many of those books were incredible; the number of times I’ve almost thrown up from crying over an indie book is honestly incalculable. I have nothing but the absolute and utmost respect for indie authors.
But I also found out that that path wasn’t for me. I had started a BookTok around the same time I started writing, and it was just... too much for me to keep up with. A full-time job, plus writing, plus trying to build up a big enough marketing base that I could launch an indie career was just too much.
That’s when I found out about small presses, which then led me to the traditional publishing world. Twitter was my first foray into it - I learned about what a literary agent was, how tradpub works, and made my first writing friends. And I realized that even though the path was going to be a nightmare, I wanted partners in my writing journey.
I sent my first-ever query letter in December 2022 for RISING TIDES. It was an almost immediate rejection, but I’ll never forget the one line of personalization they gave me: “While ultimately this project just isn't for me, I want to compliment your opening pages, which are very evocative and clear.”
When I sent that query, nobody had read RISING TIDES or my query yet. That was the first compliment I had ever received on my writing. And I’m not at all surprised it was a rejection! My original query letter was a mess. I had no idea how to write one. I actually ended up hiring Hannah Van Vels on Reedsy for professional help on my query letter, and that initial feedback was so valuable.
I only sent out a handful of queries for RISING TIDES because after immersing myself in the tradpub world (thank you to the PubTips reddit!) I pretty quickly learned that having a cliffhanger ending and needed it to be a trilogy was going to be a non-starter. My stats ended up being something like ~20 queries sent (including to 4 small presses!), and getting 3 agent requests and 3 small press requests. None ever panned out, and I ended up withdrawing the majority of them anyway.
I still remember my very first full request though. It was February 2023. I was in public, working on a (now shelved) thriller, when I got the email. I think I cried and blacked out, and was generally being such a nuisance that the table next to me asked what was wrong. They then gave me a very sweet round of applause when I told them an agent was actually interested in my BOOK!!
But even though I had that full request out, and would eventually get a few more requests on that book, I knew in my heart that it wasn’t it. And I still love that book - I might even revisit it in the future - but I knew I could do better.
Drafting The Forest Bleeds
I started working on my next book, THE FOREST BLEEDS, in March 2023. I had had the idea for a bit, simmering in the back of my mind as I finished and revised RISING TIDES. But this book really sparked to life because I had a very clear message that I wanted to get out: what would happen if I took a people-pleasing character like myself, and put her in the worst possible situation?
And THE FOREST BLEEDS was born. Saige, the main character, was so easy to write. She had so much of me poured into her. The ensemble cast was a delight; their voices flowed so effortlessly. I made myself crack up so many times writing Vaish and Thuy’s lines. The setting was so personal to me - I did my undergrad at West Virginia University and have spent a lot of time in the state - and everything felt... right.
I drafted THE FOREST BLEEDS in a little more than three months. And I couldn’t have done it without my veritable ARMY of writing friends.
Jason and Natalie - thank you to you both for being my alpha readers and enduring my absolutely insane scenes as they came out of me.
Kath, Syd, Amber, Noelle - thank you for beta reading under a massive time constraint of my own doing, and still providing the best feedback ever.
To my writing friends in general - Kath, Jason, Natalie, Syd, Amber, Virginia, MJ, thank you for always picking up the phone to listen to me rant and vent. For listening to my insane questions, for gently encouraging me through the ups and downs of querying, and for just being my people I could always go to with anything. I love you all so, so very much.
Also a special thank you to Virginia, who I won a free query critique from and did such an amazing job I eventually hired her as a sensitivity reader. I can’t recommend her editorial services highly enough!
Querying
I sent my first query for THE FOREST BLEEDS in late May 2023.
And this is where I will say: DO NOT BE LIKE ME. DO NOT DO IT. YOU WILL REGRET IT.
In late-ish May, an agent was closing for the foreseeable future, and TFB matched their MSWL almost perfectly. Despite not being actually ready - I still needed to wrap up my beta reads, line edits, etc - I said screw it and queried anyway.
2 weeks later, it was a full request.
I immediately went FERAL revising. I would not recommend it. It was not a fun week. Once again, do not be like me. My incredible, beautiful, stunning friends all beta-read and I took the next week to do some revisions and lots and LOTS of line edits. Thankfully, I draft pretty clean and thanks to my initial Alpha readers, there weren’t a ton of things to address, and the opening pages were in a decent spot.
On June 9th, I sent in my very first full request. I didn’t stop editing - I would never stop editing, actually - but my query was pretty baked, so I fired off a few more queries. I got another immediate partial request, then silence for a bit. Then, slowly but surely, the requests started trickling in.
Then came four months of waiting. I messed with my opening pages. Edited the ending. Reverted some changes back. Re-reverted them back again. Tried to work on different WIPs. Went feral. But those initial full requests took a long time to come back as pretty form rejections, and I was starting to think that maybe my next book would have to be the One.
Agent 1:1s, Pitch Events, and Conferences
Because I was going feral from the wait, I tried anything I could find to make it feel like I was doing something. But I’ll be pretty clear: I’m not sure it actually made a difference.
Between June to October, I:
Did 2 Agent 1:1s through I Am in Print and the MSWL Academy
Pitched during #QueerPit and #DVPit
Pitched 6 agents virtually at 2 writing conferences in July and September (for a detailed account on how this went, check out my blog post here)
Agent 1:1s
The Agent 1:1s were... not the most helpful, truthfully. The first 1:1 was very early on in my querying journey - I wanted to make sure that everything seemed solid. And her feedback was that everything seemed solid. Great! I had also heard stories that people have gotten full requests from these 1:1s, so I did have my fingers subtly crossed for that outcome, but that never panned out for me.
I booked a second 1:1 a couple months later because I had a new prologue that I wanted an opinion on (because as we all know, prologues are controversial). And this went VERY POORLY. She essentially ripped apart my writing, not just the prologue, and my query letter. I left the call in tears. And the worst part - she sent over an edited version of my query letter afterwards, and I disagreed with every. Single. Comment.
(Spoiler: I didn’t incorporate any of her changes. That query letter she reviewed was the letter that got me my agent.)
Twitter Pitches
The other notable events that I took part in during my querying journey were #QueerPit and #DVPit. Overall, my pitches did really well! Across the two events, THE FOREST BLEEDS ended up with 26 agents and 7 editor likes.
Getting this much engagement on a pitch was incredible. But this is where I think I'll have a somewhat reassuring experience, for anyone who's done a pitch event and not gotten many likes. None of my offers came from a pitch like! In fact, even after I started getting editor interest I began including it in my query letter, but none of the agents who offered had that version of my query. I ended up with a handful of requests, but the large majority of my pitch likes ended up never responding.
Conference Results
While it didn’t seem like the Agent 1:1s or the pitch events amounted to much, I do think attending the writing conferences helped a bit.
At the July Writers Day Workshop, I pitched 3 agents. One was Eric Smith of P.S. Literary. He was great! He asked for the full immediately and we had a great conversation for the remaining ~7 minutes of our time. Funnily enough, I had just queried another agent at P.S. Literary a couple weeks before I went to the workshop, so I emailed Eric the full to his direct email then withdrew my other query.
Fast forward two-ish months, Eric emailed me back and said while it wasn’t the right fit for him, he’d love to pass it along to a colleague if it was okay with me. I immediately said of course, and sent the latest version of the MS. He confirmed that his colleague would take a look!
The funny part: he never actually said which colleague he was sending it to. So quite frankly, I chalked it up to being a potentially kind rejection because he had met me at the conference.
Getting the Offer
By the end of September, I had gotten a pretty significant number of full requests, but with that came a lot of full rejections. Mostly form, with a handful of slight personalizations that didn’t tell me anything. One said she couldn’t suspend her disbelief of the premise. Another said the writing was too description-heavy. That’s the amount of personalized feedback I got. So obviously, I started despairing, especially when a “dream” agent rejected my full, giving all sorts of lovely praise but ultimately said she didn’t have the “must have” feeling she needed.
But then at the end of September, I got an incredibly kind and detailed R&R, complete with the option to jump on a call with her and talk it out. And of course, I immediately got COVID. But the time spent sick in bed let me marinate on all of the Feelings (happiness! someone saw potential! sadness! I’ll never get signed because it’s bad as is!) and also rationally think of how I would address the edits. We got on a call at the beginning of October where I outlined what I thought the changes could look like, and she enthusiastically was on board. It was wonderful.
I didn’t immediately withdraw my pending fulls, however! In the R&R, it felt like two of the edits weren't necessarily dealbreakers - things that if an agent was inclined to offer, it could be something easily smoothed out as part of a single revision pass. The bigger note that required a lot more changes to the MS seemed a little more like personal preference (how the mechanics of the magic worked). It made sense to me why she was leaning towards changing up this piece, but it also closed a couple doors that I wasn’t 1000% positive on closing at that time!
So I figured: I’d make the revisions, and leave the outstanding fulls alone. If I finished the R&R and the R&R agent wanted to offer, I’d send out the new version and see what happened.
But as luck would have it, work got insanely busy right afterwards. I barely had the time to start the R&R edits by the time The Email came.
Two weeks later, I started the day with 2 query rejections and a form full rejection. Then that afternoon, I got an email from Rose Ferrao at P.S. Literary, saying that Eric referred her my MS and she loved it, would I be able to get on a call?
YES I WOULD.
We set up a call for that Friday, and I spent the entire week absolutely feral with anticipation. And our talk was amazing. She really got my book - this is something that was really important to me, because THE FOREST BLEEDS is chock-full of neurodivergent and queer representation, and a really unique (weird) blend of fantasy, science, and horror.
On the call, she confirmed that yes, she was officially offering me representation. I hung up the phone and screamed.
And then - it was time to NUDGE.
One thing I absolutely underestimated was how wildly up and down the offer nudge process would be. I had read other HIGMA blogs by other authors, and they spoke about how rough it can be to get a ton of step-asides at once, and I won’t lie! I was confused! But you’ve got an offer - celebrate!!
This is me officially saying: they were all right.
There’s a weird little cognitive dissonance happening during the offer nudge period. Honestly, I’m still waiting for my agent to turn around and say “Uh, hey, never mind actually.” Half of my brain was totally settled in my choice. I really couldn’t have asked for a better initial offer - she just got my book, my characters, everything I was trying to do.
But also, after the initial surge of full requests (which yes, feels AMAZING), even if agents love your book, they’re probably going to pass. They could pass the moment you nudge with an offer, which happened with a handful of agents!
Offer Nudge Stats:
Agents nudged: 30
Immediate step aside: 6
Full Requests: 12
Agents who already had my full confirmed they were still reading: 8
During my offer period, I think I had 17 active full requests out.
Then after that initial flurry, that’s when the rejections came trickling in.
Some were genuinely the loveliest rejections I’ve ever gotten (agents are a LOT nicer when you have an offer in hand...), which is definitely a bittersweet feeling. Ironically, there were still a lot of form rejections. “Not a fit for my list” or “Wasn’t grabbed by the pages”. The second week of my nudge window, I was getting 2-3 full rejections a day. Not super fun, even though I was thrilled with my offers!
I think what also stung was how many agents really seemed to be on the fence - maybe it would have been a R&R, maybe they would have offered if they had a little more time, etc.
My (unsolicited) advice: reread your initial offer email. And another time. And maybe a few more times until you have it memorized.
Making My Decision
In the end, I had 3 offers. All from incredible, wonderful agents. It was a really tough pick! But coming into my very first call, I knew I had certain things I wanted in an agent:
Hands-on, editorial agent
Someone who got my characters, especially since my book’s MC is a neurodiverse, queer, half-Thai woman, and had an editorial vision to match
Experience in both fantasy and horror
Willing to work on my future projects with me
At a reputable agency with a strong sales record, ideally with sales to my dream imprints
Each one had a slightly different editorial vision, though there were pretty consistent themes (I needed to buff up my world building and magic system.... it’s fine I’m fine) and then different expectations on how long the revisions would take.
But what I paid the most attention to is how each agent spoke about the main character, Saige, and what details they referenced. In the end, that influenced my decision the most.
You may have guessed by now, but it’s official: I’ve signed with Rose Ferrao of P.S. Literary!
Query Letter and Stats
There were a lot of variations of the query letter that I sent out. I changed the metadata paragraph pretty much for every agent based on if they were a horror or a fantasy agent, and I eventually added lots of new short publication credits and editor interest in my bio paragraph, but I’ll include the version that ended up in Rose’s hands.
THE FOREST BLEEDS is an 85,000 word Adult Contemporary Fantasy with Horror elements. It combines the dark academia and magic of The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake and the unsettling atmosphere of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and features a F/F romantic subplot.
Saige Chambers is constantly anxious and chronically overprepared. She's desperate to find structure in a life rife with open-ended questions – from determining the best application of her blood witch magic in her Bioengineering Ph.D., to figuring out how to fit in with her cohort. When she and a few other Ph.D. students depart for a conference, she’s planned and anticipated every single detail, down to the number of minutes it takes to walk between sessions.
Except she’s not prepared for the moment their bus turns off the highway and leads them to a remote mansion in West Virginia, and the gates seal shut behind them. They’re greeted by the mansion’s owner, Arius Medea, who issues them a simple mandate: fix his injured leg, or die. But it’s no ordinary injury–the flesh melts off the bone, emitting waves of foul magic that sets Saige’s blood alight.
Saige’s colleagues want to fight back or escape. Saige thinks their best chance is to fix him fast and get out. While the mansion is equipped with the tools they need, it’s also teeming with distractions and dangers. Every night, the forest shrieks with echoed screams and glows with blood-red eyes. Arius demands Saige’s presence at intimate solo dinners, where he reveals that he knows far too much about her life. And one-by-one, her colleagues start to disappear.
As Saige struggles to unravel the twisted magic of Arius’s affliction in hopes of saving their lives, she starts to think that dying may not be the worst option––because there are far worse fates lurking in the woods.
I have a Bachelors from West Virginia University, where I learned about the West Virginia cryptids and Appalachian folklore present in this book. This book contains mental illness, neurodivergent, and LGBTQ+ representation, and shines a spotlight on the BIPOC population of West Virginia, echoing my own experience as a half-Thai woman. I’m now a Product Designer in the Washington, D.C. area. I have been published in The Humanist for a piece on accessibility in technology and recently placed third in the "I Am in Print" SFF competition.
Query Stats
Queries Sent: 107
Full Requests: 29 (17 pre-offer, 12 post-offer nudge)
Partial Requests: 3
Offers: 3
Request Rate: ~30%