A Success Story!

Feels like it's been a while!  I'm always happy to bring you another success story.  This is our first DIRECT SUCCESS STORY of 2014 -- a Secret Agent winner who signed with the Secret Agent!  Enjoy.

***

For the full post complete with many more details, GIFs and some caps lock excitement, check out the original post on my blog, Writability.

On October 7th, I submitted to Miss Authoress’s Secret Agent Contest. I’d entered a Secret Agent contest with a different manuscript earlier in the year, so I knew how it worked and I crossed my fingers and hoped for the e-mail notifying me that I’d made it in.

Except the notification day came and went without an e-mail. My entry wasn’t chosen for the contest.

I was disappointed, but I distracted myself with NaNoWriMo plans and continued to send out queries. I reminded myself there were loads more contests coming up, so I always had another chance in the future.

Then, on October 14th, the Secret Agent was revealed—except it was a surprise of two secret agents, Emily Keyes and Louise Fury. To this day, I’m not sure why I clicked to see who the winners were—I don’t usually, especially if I’m still kinda disappointed, which I was. But I clicked and read the names of the winners.

And I nearly had a heart attack. Because listed under “Runners up” was “#41 Slave and Sira.”

I stared at the winner entry. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? Had someone else named their novel Slave and Sira? That seemed really unlikely, considering “Sira” is a word in a language I made up for the novel.

I raced over to entry #41 and read, with shaking fingers, my entry. The first 250 words of my novel. The entry that I was sure hadn’t made it into the contest was posted, and had comments, and the secret agents said it was a strong opening. What. What?!

I ran back to the winner post and checked again to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, but it was there! Louise Fury wanted to see my query and the first three chapters of my manuscript. After receiving instructions from Miss Authoress, I sent off the mini-partial that very same day. And I danced. Around Twitter, anyway.

On Halloween, I received a request from Team Fury for the first fifty pages. I danced for joy and sent the pages, announcing to myself that I’d received the best Halloween treat ever. Then on November 3rd, I received a request for the full and just a couple hours after I sent it, I got a notification that Ms. Fury was following me on Twitter. I may have freaked out a bit to someone I’d been taking to at the time. Just a little.

Many weeks and anxious nights later, on December 6th, just twenty minutes before I’d been planning to go to bed, I got the e-mail I’d been dreaming of for years: Louise Fury had read my manuscript more than once, spoken with her team members, and they wanted to talk to me.

The call itself is a blur. Team Fury shared my vision for the book, and I agreed with the edit suggestions, and Louise was totally supportive of my wanting to write in multiple categories and genres, and when I hung up the phone, I was having a major David After Dentist episode.

Now, many weeks later, I am so incredibly honored to say I’m represented by Louise Fury of The Bent Agency! And I could not be happier to be joining Team Fury. :D

Thank you, Miss Authoress! That Secret Agent contest really facilitated a dream come true!

Ava Jae

Blog

Facebook

Twitter