Jumping Right In With Another Success Story!

It's wonderful to come home to happy announcements, and I'm pleased to share the following success story with you!

Hi Authoress! I can't thank you enough for hosting all your Secret Agent contests. I have learned so much from them -- from both the contests I've entered and the ones I've simply stalked :) I entered my first Secret Agent contest in January 2011 with my first manuscript, and even though the SA didn't pick me as a winner, she said in her comment that she liked the voice. I shelved that manuscript soon after, but the comment made me think that I wasn't totally crazy to be attempting this whole writing thing. A huge thing for me at that stage of the game!


By August, I was ready to start querying my second manuscript, and I got into another SA contest. I didn't get picked as a winner for that one either, but somehow the agent missed commenting on my entry. I asked you about it, and you contacted the agent. Not only did she comment, but she asked for the first 10 pages. I sent it, ended up for a request for "a bit more," and another e-mail entitled "time to send the whole thing." She ended up passing, but again I felt like I had to be on the right track and just needed to keep writing. I did and had another manuscript finished by April. My new years resolution was to let this one sit for longer than I'd let the other ones sit, so even though it was all revised, beta-ed, revised, beta-ed again, and polished, I was trying to do everything I could to keep from querying! But I figured I could at least enter a contest -- for feedback only, of course! :)


I was pretty sure I wouldn't be picked as a winner, and if by some chance I did, it'd be an honorable mention or something, and I'd only end up with a partial request. I was going in with the right attitude, right? Low expectations, focus on the feedback, don't get carried away. But then, something changed when the agent started posting her comments. With each comment I read, I was completely falling in love with this agent. She was so insightful with entry after entry and was able to bring this incredible perspective to each one -- not to mention that she did so in a way that was super respectful of each writer's abilities. By the time I found out the agent was Tricia Lawrence, the new agent at Erin Murphy Literary Agency (an agency I had been salivating over since the beginning of my querying journey), I was totally smitten. And when I found out that I had been picked as one of the winners and that she wanted the full manuscript, I was...uh....crazy excited, to say the least.


Of course, that level of excitement was nothing compared to how I felt when I got that e-mail a month later asking when we could talk on the phone. And even that didn't compare to how I felt when I got off the phone, having spent an hour and a half talking to someone who was exactly what I wanted in an agent: someone who loved my book and had the same vision for it, someone who I could brainstorm ideas with, and someone who I trusted completely. 


 So, thank you, Authoress! You've helped make yet another aspiring author's dream come true. May the good karma come back to you in the form of lots of book deals and lots and lots of chocolate! 

Ann Bedicheck Braden