How I Got My Agent

Let’s start by spoiling the happy ending. At the end of May 2024, I officially signed with the incredible Laura Zats of Headwater Literary Agency. Yay!

It was a long, arduous road to get to that contract. I ended up doing a massive revision in the middle of querying, and then a second, even more massive R&R specifically for Laura. In the end, all that hard work paid off, because we went on submission pretty quickly with my debut novel—a dark fantasy about lesbian necromancers, love, and revenge, set in Victorian London—and I’m currently sitting on a huge pile of ✨vague publishing news✨ I can’t share yet.

So I figured this was a great time to write about what I can talk about: how I got my agent.

In October 2021, I began writing this book hoping it might put me on the path toward living the creative life I craved. I was in my final semester of grad school, up at 5am every day, sick to my stomach 3-5x every day, running on fumes, navigating a pandemic, and regretting my life choices. I’d dipped a toe into the querying trenches in 2020 with a middle grade novel that went no where (I didn’t know what I was doing). I later wrote a horror YA that I shelved immediately upon finishing (I still didn’t know what I was doing, but now I knew I didn’t want to write kidlit). These two books were written, I think, to prove to myself I was actually capable of writing a book.

When I began writing my third novel, I was deeply in need of a space to process a lot of anger and trauma. I’d read a lot about writing “the book of your heart,” but my heart was looking pretty rotten. My mom stopped counting her losses when 40 people she knew died from Covid. Death—and the potential for death—was everywhere. If my vigilance lapsed for even a moment, I was convinced I might bring home a disease that could kill or disable my family.

So. My heart wasn’t feeling very happy. And it was in this unhappiness that I thought of how much I loved villains, and conceived of a necromancer living in a world where necromancy was forbidden. A necromancer who, in any other story, would be the villain… but in this one, she would prevail. I didn’t know if anyone would want to read a book about a furious woman who lost everything she loved, looked at God, and said, No. I didn’t know if an unkind, unlikeable, angry woman, whose very soul had been cut apart by a man in power and left her with chronic pain, would be “relatable.” But I needed her. In all her messy, martyry, broken grief, I needed her.

I began querying in January 2023, right before I tested positive for Covid for the first time. I did not have a mild case. It was devastating, and left me with lingering heart & lung issues that I struggle with to this day. If there was an upside, it was this: I decided if I was alive, I was going to query, and if I was going to query, I was going to go big. I wasn’t going to give up, even when I wanted to. I was going to see how far I could go with this book.

Looking back, I can see I queried too early. This book wasn’t finished cooking when I sent it off. I can also see, however, that this book would never have grown into what it is today if I hadn’t jumped into the trenches when I did. A lot of people ask “how do you know when your book is ready to query?” and the honest answer is: you don’t know, not 100%, not without doubts. You just have to sit down one day and say “I’m doing this, and if I need to reassess, I’ll reassess.”

And that’s what I did. In July 2023, after several full/partial requests and subsequent rejections, I reassessed my novel and began revising. At the beginning of August, I received a full request from Laura Zats. I was upfront about revising the manuscript, and promised I’d send her the full within a few weeks. By the end of the month, I sent her the updated version. It wasn’t perfect; it wasn’t what I dreamed my book could be; but it was the best version of the story I was able to write at the time. In the meantime, I kept querying, and I kept receiving rejections.

Toward the end of 2023, I was thinking I might have to shelve this novel. While the hook had attracted a decent amount of attention, the book itself had problems I didn’t know how to fix. One of those problems was its angry, festering heart. “Cozy” and “positivity” are big right now, and my book just isn’t any of those things. Another problem was agent response. For example, I received an R&R request from an agent who confessed she didn’t finish reading the book (did not even make it halfway), and though she was clearly excited by the concept, her suggestions led me to believe she didn’t understand it. For a couple days, I floundered: should I begin revising according to her suggestions, even if I didn’t agree? Even if it didn’t feel right? Just for a chance at having my book out there? In the end, I decided no, I would not do that.

Maybe when the market changed, I could query this book again. It wasn’t goodbye forever—just goodbye while I worked on something else. I was ready, I thought, to move on.

In December, an email from Laura appeared in my inbox. I was at work, and didn’t read beyond the email title.

“I can guess what that’s gonna be,” I mumbled. I held off opening it until later that evening. If I was going to mourn my book, I wanted to do so with a friend.

Dear reader, Laura was not emailing me with a rejection. She wanted to schedule a call to discuss a revision. Where other agents & readers had bounced off my awful, terrible, darling protagonist, Laura loved her. Laura wanted to see what we could do to fix the pacing, expand the world building, and make the book work. Despite the earlier R&R request from another agent, I wasn’t nervous about what Laura might have to say. It was clear, from her email, that she loved my book and wanted to make it better, rather than twist it into a new shape.

We met the following week, and spent an hour discussing the problems with the book. Our conversation was deeply collaborative, frank, with no bullshit about what wasn’t working, and also full of laughter. I could feel how much she loved my book; feeling it from her reminded me why I loved it, too.

We discussed world building. We discussed reordering events—a massive reordering events. We discussed adding a third POV character. We discussed a little more murder. A little more connective tissue on the skeleton of this dark, magical world. It was amazing to talk to someone who not only saw the same problems I saw, but had thoughts on how to fix them!!

Was it intimidating? Yes. Was I terrified? Yes. Was I invigorated? Yes. For the entirety of our discussion, I knew that Laura understood this book, and wanted to see me make it the best version of itself it could be. Energized by our discussion, I buckled back in.

From December to May, I worked. I re-outlined. I researched. I despaired. I hoped. I turned my brain over a million times. I cried—sometimes certain I couldn’t do it, sometimes seeing the light at the end. Laura emailed me to cheerlead me on. I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote, until finally I had a book in my hands that was the book I’d been trying to write all along.

By May 2024, I completed my R&R. But I hesitated to send it off. There are plenty of people who complete R&Rs who don’t get an offer. Would these past months of rigorous work match what Laura was looking for? Had I been thorough enough in revising our list of objectives? Did I do it?

I’d never know if I didn’t hit send.

I sent the manuscript to Laura on a Thursday. By Monday night, I received an email asking for a call. Because my revisions were so extensive, and because I agreed with Laura 100% on what needed to be done, I didn’t query any other agents during my R&R process. Laura encouraged me to tell any other agents with whom I had active queries that I had an offer, but at that point, all I had were two queries that were over a year old, and I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted to be on Team Laura.

The next day, I had the contract in my inbox. And from there, dear reader, the rest is history.

(And I must give a shoutout, here, to the little circle of friends who beta read, line edited, fact checked, drew my OCs, told me to go to bed/take a nap/rest, edited my query letters, responded to my panic in the group chat at 2am, etc. This was not a solitary, lonely process. I was surrounded by a group of cheerleaders the whole way through. What would I do without you?)

Final Query Stats
Queries Sent: 41
Partial Requests: 2 (1 became a full request)
Full Requests: 7 (ghosted on 2)
R&R Requests: 2
Offers: 1