My querying process and debut journey:
My querying experience was both long and extremely lucky: Long in that it took over a year from first sending my book out to signing with my agent. Extremely lucky because I was fortunate to land an agent with my first book, and it only took a year!
I came out of Hollins University with a completed manuscript of AFTER THE INK DRIES, which I’d written for my final thesis. But let me tell you, even after all the work it took to become my thesis, it still needed a lot of revision—a whole year of further revisions, in fact, until I finally decided it was strong enough to query.
I had received so much enthusiasm and support for this book from the people around me—it even won a few awards through my university and local writing organizations—and everyone kept telling me I’d find an agent quickly. So that’s what I expected. But when months went by and slowly the rejections kept trickling in, it was hard. And the advice I kept getting was the same: that Thomas’s storyline was flawed somehow. Something wasn’t clicking. I wracked my brain to try and solve the problem, even creating two separate timelines and writing dozens of flashback scenes that would never get published. (I’ll bet I have over 100k of additional words that will never see the light of day from various drafts of AFTER THE INK DRIES.) Yet, it wasn’t until later when I finally realized I hadn’t given Thomas enough to lose if he chooses to do the right thing and tell the truth about what happened. I hadn’t given him high enough stakes.
Before I knew this, though, I attended a writing retreat where I met an editor whom I’m indebted to (and who has since left the business, but at the time was an editor at Harper Collins). We ended up connecting over something else I’d written, and she asked me to send her AFTER THE INK DRIES. I did, she read it, then she sent me an email with a few stellar big-picture notes on Thomas’ POV, all in one or two tiny paragraphs. Yet, as I was actively working through her notes, she suddenly left the industry without warning. Even still, I kept at my revisions for several more weeks, knowing they were leading me in the right direction. When that draft was complete, I sent out that revised manuscript to agents who had been holding onto my old draft and whom I’d emailed to update, telling them that I was actively working through an editor’s feedback and would they like to see the new version? And like magic, within a few days after sending out the revised manuscript, I had my first offer of representation from an agent, gaining five total offers in all. I chose Sara Crowe from Pippin, who was actually in the very first batch of queries I’d sent out. She’d seen potential in my earlier draft but confessed she couldn’t put a finger on what wasn’t quite working so she held onto it. Then, when I sent her the revised version, she offered representation immediately, and I felt like she would be the best fit based on her vision of the book, which most aligned with mine. Not to mention, she’s a total agent badass!
All’s well that ends well, as they say. But still, it took three years of drafting the novel off and on, a full year of revisions, a full year of querying with something like 54 total agent queries, many, many rejections, and one kind-hearted editor whose stellar edits changed everything. And as so many writers know out there, I’m one of the very very lucky ones to have gotten an agent with my first completed manuscript, let alone sold that same book.
And the edits didn’t stop there! After we went on submission, my first editor, the amazing Liesa Abrams, gave me an R&R, meaning a “Revise and Resubmit.” She’d read my book and she loved it, but she had some changes she wanted to see, and she wanted to make sure I’d be willing to take those edits as far as they needed to go before she officially offered. Luckily, after another three more months of revision or so, Liesa ended up loving the edits I did for her, and she bought the book!
Still, the publishing world takes time and throws insane curveballs, even when you’ve had a smoother start. I went out on submission to editors with the book in Nov 2018 and got the R&R in something like Feb 2019. I revised again until around May 2019, then got the book offer at the end of July/beginning of August 2019. After multiple rounds of further edits, 2020’s pandemic hit and the imprint I’d sold to—Simon Pulse—was dissolved during a publishing house merger. My editor left to join a new imprint at a different publishing house as well, so I had no idea what was going to happen to my beloved debut for a while there. Fortunately, my book survived the shuffle and it was transferred to a new editor and imprint instead of getting dropped. It found a great home with the fabulous Krista Vitola at Simon & Schuster’s Books for Young Readers and was released in July 2021. Whew!
And the icing on the cake? On top of seeing AFTER THE INK DRIES through to publication, Krista just so happened to love my second novel, THE SECRETS WE KEEP, so much that she ended up acquiring it! What are the chances??