How My Agent found me…Part one of my publishing path

Do not be misled by this hopeful title, I searched for my literary agent. Diligently, seriously, for over a decade and across four novels, two of which should never have left my laptop. (Sorry, early readers of Shelved Novels #1 (Epic Fantasy) and #2 (YA Speculative), back then I didn’t know what I didn’t know.)

After those novels I took a break from writing, or more accurately, writing took a break from me.

To summarize the worst and eventually best 4 years of my life, during which I did not write anything longer than an email, my (previously abusive and complicated) mother died, I had back surgery after a year and a half of debilitating pain, I realized my (tenuous and complicated) marriage needed to end for good, and that my job as a hospice doctor was drowning me in grief.

I did say eventually the best years of my life, a revelation realized in hindsight that crawled across my vision like sunrise, the creeping pink-hued light announcing a fresh, restored day. My transformed life. During my time of darkness and uncertainty, however, I thought I would never write fiction again. That the spark was dead out, like a soggy campfire.

In grief, I go to ground. I put my chin down and barrel through, a well-developed skill of mine, honed by the heated crucible of medical training and other traumas. Leaving a 22-year relationship, watching despair dim the light of my twelve-year-old child’s eyes, rebuilding my adult identity from the ground up, starting with intense therapy, a tiny apartment, and a new job, well. Let’s say sobbing kept me busy on my hours-long commute every day for a year. I didn’t care about being a writer. When I cared again, I was a different writer. A changed, more authentic and stronger woman.

Gone were dreams of fantasy worlds and magic stones, instead I wrote a dark, and darkly funny novel about a divorced, down-on-her-luck hospice doctor who becomes a vigilante killer in the vicious underbelly of Hollywood. Her name is Lou, and I adore her.

This novel deserved to leave my laptop and I queried extensively* all through the fateful years of… a global pandemic. Hmm, any thoughts on why this novel didn’t find me an agent? Timing, they say, is everything.

But the spark was back, and my current novel on submission was born, a dark and darkly funny thriller about a heist gone wrong in an airport, and the ensuing cat and mouse game between two complicated, powerful women—a stepdaughter and a stepmother. I believed in this novel, too, and queried extensively*. Got tons of requests, edited out subplots and POC characters, improved my submission materials*, received more requests, worked with my two amazing writing groups, edited more, etc. Was named a 2024 finalist in the Killer Nashville Claymore Award for Best Unpublished Thriller, so cool. Then, crickets.

Over a hundred rejections in, I decided to give my novel a little break. Let her rest on the shelf, she’d been working hard. (Gave crying another try.)

Started my in-progress novel, a less-dark, also funny novel about modern sister-witches who travel in time to save other witches, until an ancient enemy blows up the portal, trapping them apart in time and forcing them to risk everything, including life, liberty, and love, to defeat their ancient, very pissed-off ancestor and return home to one other.

Are you sensing a theme here? Yes, strong women doing cool stuff. Also, concerning me as an author, I’ll spell it out: G-R-I-T.

Why didn’t I just give up? To be honest, I probably would if I could, because rejection never stops stinging. Never. The roller coaster of requests to read my material and the bloody crash down of ‘no’, no matter how pleasantly the bad news is presented, sucks the marrow from my creative bones.

To quote the immortal words of Sylvia Plath, “I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.” The voice within me keeps showing up and I keep listening. As a writer, I constantly strive to be better, I believe in my voice, and I don’t quit.

Then, one fine day not long ago, I got an email from a new agent who had read my thriller when she was an intern at a different agency. Upon starting to acquire her own clients, she couldn’t stop thinking about my story. Wanted to know if I’d been “snapped up” by another agent and if my manuscript was still available. (More crying happened, the happy kind.)

If you want to know what happened next, please read Part Two. (See, I’m a thriller writer these days.)

*please join my Substack, Mayhem Ensues, to access other posts about writing, learn more about querying literary agents, find out what comprises ‘submission materials’, and to read my successful query letter!

craft book recommendation: refuse to be done by matt bell

This book got me where I needed to be, loving my draft and getting excited to go back to the page for more work.

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