Announcement: A Fond Farewell (of sorts) to Josh

Some of you have been with me all along, and some of you are newer to the blog and less familiar with my writing journey.  For the sake of history:  on December 17, 2010, I signed with Josh Getzler, who was then with the Russell Volkening Agency.

If you've never read the 3-part story of how we came to be, GRAB A CUPPA AND READ IT NOW.

(I really love this guy.)

For 5 years, Josh and I have stuck it out.  Through the disappointments and near-misses and long, bleak stretches, he never threw me out the back door.  And I didn't throw him out, either.  (Well, I tried to, once.  But he loved me through that episode, too.)

I'm thrilled (beyond measure) to announce that I am now represented by Danielle Burby of Hannigan Salky Getzler.  (Which is, of course, the same agency.  So I'm not really leaving.)  The simple reason?  My current project (as you probably know) is YA fantasy, which Josh does not represent.  Danielle, on the other hand, loves fantasy, and has been indispensable during the last two rounds of revisions on this manuscript.

Thankfully, Josh will still be on board in an advisory capacity.  He has an amazing editorial eye, and I can honestly say that my completed works would not be what they are if it weren't for his input.  (Here is a great blog post about his editing style.  If he's on your to-be-queried list, take a moment to read this!)

As for Danielle?  I loved her almost from the moment I met her.  She came on board as Josh's assistant in early 2013, and started to build her own client list faster than you can say "Danielle Burby is a Superhero".  When I was in NYC this July, I spoke with Josh about the possibility of shifting to Danielle once my current novel was ready for submission, and he agreed that it was a good idea.  Last week, we made it official.

I'm so happy to be moving forward with Danielle (who, when she sent me the agency agreement, closed the email with, "I'm excited to hit the ground running together in 2016!". I mean, how could I NOT be thrilled?).  I know you all understand how amazing it feels when someone shares the vision and passion of your work.  Danielle was enthusiastic about this project when I was still drafting it, and her level of investment and optimism continues to be unflagging.

And, seriously?  How could you not love this face?

So here's to a new year and new beginnings.  Big hugs and thanks to those of you who have been cheering me on FOR PRETTY MUCH FOREVER.  I'm not sure I can ever adequately express my thanks for your faithful support over the years.  Mine was never meant to be the fast-and-flashy success story, yes?  And I'm so very grateful that so many of you have stuck with me through this (very long) journey.  More times than I can count, YOU WERE THE REASON I didn't quit.  (How could I quit when I'd spent so much time telling YOU not to quit?)

Josh:  Thanks for 5 years of not giving up.  You will always be my Agentman.

Danielle:  Thanks for believing in me enough to take me on.  And now I'll need to come up with a nickname for you, too. :)

Everyone:  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Agently Wisdom For Querying Authors

You may or may not know that Josh Getzler (my irreplaceable agent) blogs every Tuesday at Hey, There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room.  His post this week offers excellent insight on what to do and what not to do when you query him (and other agents).

Read this and take notes!

SOME FRIENDLY GUIDELINES AND PET PEEVES, by Josh Getzler and Danielle Burby

And here's an extra bonus:  If you have any questions about querying in general, or about Hannigan Salky Getzler in particular, LEAVE YOUR QUESTIONS IN THE COMMENT BOX HERE.  Josh and Danielle will pop by when they have free moments to offer their wisdom/insight/brilliance.

(Note: Please read the blog post BEFORE asking your questions.)

You're welcome! :)

Why I'm Not Self-publishing (right now)

Seriously.  I've got a great platform, lots of potential readers.  Self-publishing (at the very least e-publishing) seems like a potential fit.

But for me, right now, it's not.

Long-time MSFV readers probably already know that, long ago and far away, I did self-publish a book.  Not full-blown "self", mind you--I used a reputable POD publisher who gave all rights to the authors (which is what I wanted).  It was heady at first, because this particular publisher rejected over 90 percent of the manuscripts sent to them for consideration.  (This was their way of elevating themselves above the dime-a-dozen vanity presses out there.  It worked.)

My book was non-fiction for a strong niche market.  At the time, I ran an online community for this particular niche (surprise, surprise), so I had a very-small-but-loyal base for book sales.  It could have been a great launchpad for a successful sales run.

It wasn't.  Because I knew absolutely nothing about marketing, and I didn't have the time (or money) necessary to peddle my wares the way I really needed to.  The book piddled along and, despite its glowing Amazon reviews, faded into the nether regions.

(One day, when I reveal myself, you can all skip over and look at it.  I let my POD contract expire several years ago, so it's no longer available to purchase new, but it's still sitting on its Amazon page, smiling sadly.)

Aside from the marketing difficulty, though, I've got other reasons for choosing to stick with traditional publishing right now.  (And anyway, all authors need to market their books, so that's a moot point.)  Namely:

Lack of distribution.  When my little book finally flew into the world, my poor dad could not understand why he couldn't walk into the local bookstore and find it on the shelves.  My book was distributed by Ingram, so it was actually available in any bookstore across the nation--but you had to order it.  Because, yanno, I didn't have the means to whip up a regional bus tour (a la Patrick Carman) or hard sell my itty-bitty-book-among-millions to all the big scary booksellers out there.  And this is important to me.

Inability to produce the book RIGHT.  If one wants to truly self-publish, that means doing everything...well, yourself.  Page formatting, cover art, sales, everything.  And I don't have the money to do that sort of thing right.  Good cover art is expensive.  Bookbinding is expensive.  And even from an e-book standpoint, the thing needs to LOOK GOOD and BE DONE RIGHT.  And, frankly, I don't want to spend my time formatting a document for a Kindle, and I don't want to spend my money paying someone else to do it.

When I self-pubbed my non-fiction, I hired a graphic artist to produce the cover (it was whimsical and quite perfect for the book, but it wasn't the sort of thing I'd use now), and I paid an English major friend $500 to copyedit for me.  So, yes, I took the whole thing seriously.  But my standards have evolved, and it would take a lot more money (a lot) to produce a book the way I'd like to produce it today.  And I'm simply don't have the means to do it.  Not even close.

I write fiction now.  This isn't to say you can't self-publish fiction--you absolutely can.  I have colleagues who have successfully done so.  But my personal take on self-publishing is that it's an especially effective way to get a non-fiction book out there.  Especially when you've got a strong niche audience.  If I were to write another non-fiction (and I've actually got one up my sleeve), I would absolutely consider self-publishing over traditional.  Especially today, with the exponential growth of e-books and e-readers and e-everything.  I wouldn't hesitate to self-publish another non-fiction.

But for me, fiction is a different animal.  (I've written both, so, yeah, I can say this.)  I don't want to spend 50 or 75 percent of my work time on all the non-writing aspects of getting (and keeping) a book out there.  I want to write.  And while going with a traditional publisher means I don't own the rights to my book, and I don't have final say over the cover, and a dozen other "I don'ts", to me it's worth it because I will be able to spend my time writing while someone else does all that stuff.  Someone qualified.

Marketing, of course, is still my responsibility.  Any author, whether self- or traditionally-published, is going to have to also become a marketer.  That's just the way the game goes.  And I'm okay with that.

I love my agent.  This goes without saying.  And it's not actually a reason for choosing traditional publishing.  But Josh makes it possible for me to concentrate on my writing while he does other hard stuff (because writing is hard, too).  He's actually quite progressive, and we've discussed less-than-traditional approaches to publishing as well as the Big Six route.  It's one of the things I like about him--he's growing and changing along with the industry.  Always open to new possibilities.

But ultimately, my relationship with him allows me to be the writer I want to be, working hard to break into the traditional market without having to worry about the how.  That's Josh's job.  My job is to write good stories.

In a way, it's dichotomous; I'm a fiercely independent person who likes to do things her own way.  Self-publishing, in this light, seems like a perfect fit.  But it's not.  Not for me, not for now.

That's just me.  You may be different.  Or you may be the same, but change your mind six months or a year from now.  Really, it's all good.  The most important thing is for each of us to understand what we want and why we want it.  And then to grab it with both hands and hang on for dear life.

Good dreams die hard.  So keep dreaming, and keep working hard.  Really, really hard.  Because that's what it will take, regardless of what your path to publication ultimately looks like.

We're all in this together.

Authoress's Favorite Photo of the Year

I love this photo more than words can say!  Alice Loweecey, one of our MSFV Success Story authors, hunted Josh down this weekend at Bouchercon, for the sole purpose of getting this picture taken.

If this isn't made of 50 shades of awesome, nothing is!  Thank you, Alice, for hooking up with my beloved agent at what is clearly his favorite event of the year.  I may have to make this my desktop picture.  (No, really.  I'm totally dorky like that.)

No Turning Back...Or, It's a Good Thing I Love my Agent

No, really.  This post isn't actually about the effervescent Josh Getzler.  (Who, by the way, is dying for you to follow him on Twitter. RIGHT HERE.)

This is about another subtle shift-in-the-writer-psyche that happens after you're agented.  It seems ultra-obvious, but for some reason it hasn't really hit me until now.

Namely, I'm not in charge anymore.

Think about the freedom you have, pre-agent.  (Or, for that matter, pre-editor.) You decide what to write, when to write it.  You come up with your own timeline, your own goals. I started giving myself deadlines a couple years ago, for instance. I knew I would NEED to be able to write to deadline eventually.  In fact, I feared I wouldn't be able to do it.  (Truly. I thought it might be a show-stopper.)

So, yeah. I trained myself to write to deadlines.  But nobody told me to do it.  I was, yanno, in charge of myself.

Well, okay.  I'm still in charge.  Kind of.  Josh isn't making unreasonable demands, isn't sending me to-do lists, isn't threatening me to do things His Way Or Else.  But the truth is that, when I signed with him, I was saying, in a sense, "You are managing my career."

Do you hear that?  It's more than just "You are going to sell my book."  And it's certainly more than "Oh my freaking gosh, you actually LIKE MY STUFF and I get to tell everyone about it!"

No.  It's "You are managing my career."

Not manipulating.  Not "taking over."  Not make-or-breaking.  Just...managing.

And that involves a level of conceding things.  Things like, "What should I be doing while *X* is going on?" And "Where's my place in this week's client queue?" And "Let's go over the game plan one more time to make sure I understand."

And so on.

Sometimes it means getting wrapped up in "Project F" and suddenly having to refocus on something different.  Sometimes it means waiting without knowing what, exactly, you should be doing--if anything. Sometimes it means forcing yourself to concentrate on your work while you're on pins and needles. Or while you're discouraged.  Or while you're Just Not Sure about anything.

You can't go off in a corner and start writing a new story just to make yourself feel better.  Well, I mean, you could.  But it would be awfully counterproductive if your career demands something different.  Or if your agent is waiting on revisions. Or if you're going to have to stop what you're doing, anyway, as soon as you get a certain phone call. (Hypothetically speaking.)

Yeah.  Not "in charge" anymore.

All that to say, it's a good thing! It's what I've wanted.  Needed.  It's incredibly freeing to be able to focus on SIMPLY WRITING.  (Well, I'm highly distractible. But you know what I mean.)  And in the end, this is where I want to be.  Even if it means waiting when I don't want to wait, or revising when I'd rather not revise, or explaining to my husband for the hundredth time that agents sign CLIENTS, not BOOKS, and that Josh and I are going to be a team for time untold.

It's just the control freak in me, rearing her twisted little head.  I've got her well under control most of the time.  In fact, I've come a long way!  (You wouldn't want to know the Old Me. No, you would not.) Acknowledging the change in my "freedom status" and reminding myself that this is exactly where I need to be helps keep me centered.

So.  There's your dose of Authoress brain goo for the month.  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go stalk my agent.

(Kidding. I'm just kidding!)

(Well, sort of.)

Authoress's Great Escape

Hello!  I'm still a bit discombobulated, but it's good to be back.

I think.

Transitions can be tricky, yes?  So I'm kicking off my Big Return with a pictorial history of my awesome vacation.  Because it was crammed with memorable moments, and a few of them are share-able.

Our first stop, after parking for the night at the home of Mr. A's relatives, was an IN-THE-FLESH MEETING WITH JODI MEADOWS.  Not that we were excited to discover that we actually AREN'T the same person.  And that we could, yanno, TALK TO instead of TYPE AT each other.

We met in the parking lot of a local diner, and of course I couldn't wait to plop my red hat onto Jodi's head.  You can see how reluctant she was to try it on.

After a loooooong breakfast (my coffee got so cold that we asked the waitress to nuke it), we headed to the bookstore, where we met up with Ricki Schultz. Okay, it was a little weird being introduced as "Authoress." So I told her my name.

If you try to wheedle it out of her, I will hunt you down.

Anyway, Ricki looks WAY better in the hat than I ever could, don't you think?

And of course, I had to capture the uber-cuteness of Writerly Girls in Hats, just because:

Naturally I had to get in front of the camera, too.  See that flash-drained book?  That's the brand-new-shiny copy of Elana Johnson's POSSESSION I bought while visiting with Jodi and Ricki.  Totally appropriate purchase, don't you think?

And if that's not enough proof that Jodi and I are actually NOT the same person, maybe this will be:

After bidding farewell to Ricki and making my purchase, I made my way to Jodi's house, where I was, with much trepidation, introduced to her Ferret Army.

Clearly my feet are attractive to the long-bodied, hairy type.  Or maybe it was my Birkies.  At any rate, the silly little things won me over in very short order.

This is the part where I publicly apologize to Jodi for maligning ferretkind:

I'M SORRY FOR MALIGNING FERRETKIND.

Because, yes.  They are extremely cute and friendly.  Even when they are biting bits of me.

Regardless of the fact that favoritism might be damaging to ferrets, I was definitely fondest of Bobby, who was too small to wear my hat.  So it wore him instead.

Before it was time for me to leave, Jodi taught me how to--wait for it--spin.  As in, fiber into yarn.  As in, the kind of thing my fingers and brain aren't designed for.

But I did it!! And only because Jodi is a patient and attentive teacher.  And a master of spinning and all-things-yarnish in her own right.

Here is my wee skein, of which I am measurelessly proud:

My delightful Jodivisit was followed by a few days at my parents' home, which was followed by an entire week at the shore.  My heart, soul, spirit, and about half of my brain are still there.

Yep.  Birkies and beach.  The above photo sums up the week.  I can only add that there is something about the ocean that lubricates my mind.  I spent the earliest part of each morning alone on the beach, and part of that time was spent plotting.  I can honestly say that I didn't have a single bout of blank staring.  Not one!  Which proves that I should be living by the ocean.

The pain of leaving my favorite beach town was softened by my trip to New York, which was the last Big Exciting Thing on my agenda.  I met Josh at the sparkly-new Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency, where he introduced me to his delightful assistant Maddie Raffel, who deserves to have been photographed but was, sadly, overlooked.  You can get a peek at her adorableness, though, by following her on Twitter.

I spared Josh the humiliation of wearing the hat in the restaurant, but nabbed him after lunch for the Josh-In-Hat photo shoot.

Honestly, I DIDN'T tell him how to pose.  He just owned the moment.

Of course, Josh isn't the one who needs to stay anonymous.  So here's the faceful version:

Can't you just hear him saying, "Look at my new digs! AWESOME, huh?"

And, yeah. Those are stuffed muppets on his desk. (I didn't ask.)

Anyway, it's always interesting to see if you "click" with someone in real life, right?  Jodi was a no-brainer; we spend so much online time together that it's almost like we're in the same room already.  Not to mention the cell phone squeeing during peak moments in our lives -- like the sale of her book last June and my signing with Josh in December.

My relationship with Josh, on the other hand, has consisted of a few phone calls, a steady slew of emails, and occasional Facebook banter.  It could've gone either way.  As in, "Wow, this guy is NOTHING like the way he portrays himself online!" or "Yep, he's totally the Josh I know."

You guessed it.  He's totally the Josh I know.  And I'm certain (yet again, as ever) that I've signed with the right agent.

I have no idea if he had a similar response to meeting me.  You'll have to ask him.

And, yeah.  One more picture.  With BOTH of us.  But you know I can't REALLY let you see me.  Not yet!

So here it is--Josh and the Ghostly Authoress:

There you have it!  And now I'm back to business as usual.  Thanks for hanging around while I was gone!  Now, what should we do next...?

Celebration

Just because I'm all sorts of excited on behalf of my irreplaceable agent, I want to share the good news that Josh has left Russell and Volkening and, along with three of his colleagues, has opened the Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency.  (I was finally able to type that without looking.)

Read about the agency's opening day here.

And if you're planning on querying one of them? Give them a couple weeks. Because, yanno. Lost staplers and all that.

Happy Little Side Trips

I'm feeling much too loquacious to sit back silently while you critique. So here are a few fun clicks for those of you who thrive on distraction.  Or just like to read things.

1. My adorable agent is now blogging at Hey, There's a Dead Guy In The Living Room. For those of you who are inclined to stalk agents whenever possible (you know I encourage this, in a non-creepy context), have at it. Josh's first post is a wonderful slice-of-life piece that displays his ability to share his early morning hours equally with work and fatherhood.

2. My adorable friend, crit partner, and fabulous author Jodi Meadows blogged about me yesterday. Just because I asked her to. (Okay. I was totally kidding. But she was desperate for blog content.) Almost everything she says is true. And she will love you for forever (or at least for a while) if you leave a comment.

3. Installment 4 of The Basics is up on the teen blog: Too Many Modifiers. Gettin' my grammar geek on. (What a great excuse to run a teen blog, yes?)

Enjoy! And keep those great crits coming.

He Said/She Said: Happily Ever After

(Read previous installment HERE.)


JOSH: Let me explain very quickly: I’m wickedly picky because by the time Authoress queried, I was already representing two very different dystopian novels—a YA zombie/vampire story with a remarkably light touch, and an adult masterpiece that was basically Faulkner with zombies (The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell—read it!). So I needed any additional dystopias to be different. And this was. But still needed work…

AUTHORESS: Shortly after I sent Josh my full, Beth Revis sent me her much-anticipated critique of the novel. I don’t call her Diva for nothing! Beth’s editorial letter and in-line notes provided me—for the first time ever—with a vision for just what might be wrong with my manuscript! It was too much to swallow all at once, but it gave me hope. I figured I’d wait to hear from Josh and then decide my next course of action—rip once more into the manuscript, or shelve it.

JOSH: So this is the way I go through queries, and the relative efficiencies, and lacks thereof, in the process.

First of all, I get between 10 and 20 email queries a day. If I'm interested in the topic and think the writing is reasonably strong, I'll ask to see 50 pages or, occasionally, the whole thing.

Most of the time I'm reasonably quick responding to initial emails. (Note: not in the last two months or so. My very delicate balance between "just a bit behind" and "totally screwed" tipped over to the latter. Part of the problem is that I do indeed read them all, even if it's only to realize two sentences in that it's totally wrong for me.)*

So let’s say I’ve asked for a partial. Somewhat unfairly, that's where the REAL bottleneck happens. A query only takes a few minutes, but a partial is often a significant time commitment, and it's time that is very hard indeed to carve out. The most unfair aspect of that is that these are manuscripts I already think COULD have potential, and they often linger in my "partials received" email folder for months. I say that I try to respond in eight weeks, but that is an estimate, and is entirely slave to my other time commitments.

Incidentally, so you know, the most significant time commitment is reading and editing manuscripts submitted by my current clients. The reason my delicate balance went to "totally screwed" is that in one week at the end of October NINE of my authors submitted manuscripts. I then needed to read those first, give edits--occasionally line edit--and prepare them for submission to publishers, and then submit them. I was working fourteen hour days through November and December, so I couldn't even take more work home than I already was.

Which again gets back to our Authoress. There have been a couple of times in this process where she clearly HAD to have been giving up on me. But fortunately, she didn't, and we were able to connect. Here's that part of the story.

When I read her manuscript for the first time, I thought, "Geez, there is really something there." For the first part (and not surprisingly), the writing was strong and clear. This is the single most important thing for me. You don't need to be Proust. But you DO need to be readable from beginning to end. Not overwritten, not flowery, not too spare, either. As a novelist, you are telling a story, and you need to skip the histrionics and just tell it. Authoress did that.

Second, her idea was interesting and creative; complex, sure, but understandable. It's dystopian, which I like; but fundamentally about interesting, sympathetic characters.

And that's the other thing. You don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel plot wise in order to be successful. But I must be engaged with the characters. And I felt that way with Authoress's "scooby gang," as I called them, of teenage rebels.

But with that, I didn't offer representation right away. I thought there were some serious holes in the plot and the dystopia, and felt that they were significant enough to make me need to wait and see whether Authoress was able to make it work. So I did something I do rather rarely--I had a full-on editorial conversation with her and suggested the significant changes, and said I'd re-evaluate after she sent them in.

AUTHORESS: Wow. I didn’t know I had a “scooby gang”!

So Josh and I talked on the phone for the first time on August 4th. He’d only had my full for a month and half, so I didn’t feel liked it had taken that long to hear from him. (Once, an agent had one of my partials for a year and half. Seriously.) True confession: I hate phones. So I was incredibly grateful that the call was scheduled ahead of time, and that Josh emailed me right before he called to let me know he was calling.

And something amazing happened. I listened to someone talking passionately about my story. And my characters. Passionately! And I knew—I knew!!—that Josh was the first and only person who had truly captured the vision of my novel.

Despite the novel’s brokenness, he “got” it!

I scribbled half-legible notes as Josh detailed the areas of the manuscript that he felt needed work. If I decided to take this on, it would mean sweeping revisions. As in, sweeping. Not the basic plot; not the characters. But sweeping nonetheless.

In the course of the conversation, Josh asked me what my plans were for the novel. I told him I was nearing the end of a long string of rejections and that I was considering shelving it.

“Don’t shelve it,” he said.

Words to live by!

Also? Josh’s suggestions lined up SO CLOSELY to Beth Revis’s notes that it was almost uncanny. The proverbial lights came on.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t completely ready to dig in. Wasn’t sure how to start. Meanwhile, a couple of my emails to Josh went astray, and when he didn’t answer them, I assumed he’d changed his mind about me. Like, maybe I came off as a blathering moron on the phone and he’d thought twice about working through the revisions with me.

Which, yanno, was entirely possible.

About a month went by, and my thoughts on the novel started to crystallize. Then, just when I’d written Josh off for good, he emailed me. He asked me how the revisions were going and—wait for it—said, “I keep thinking about the [story] and all the potential there is for the book, and can't wait to see what you've done with it.”

I responded as soon as I regained consciousness, and then dove into the revisions with gusto. It was admittedly a difficult leap, because I was in the midst of a WIP about which I was equally passionate (it’s a YA urban fantasy), and it was hard to set it aside and switch gears. For a while, I worked on both simultaneously. But ultimately I honed in on the dystopian, determined to get the revised version to Josh before Thanksgiving.

Type A personality for the win! I sent him the revision on November 10. And the nail-biting began.

JOSH: So I waited a few months for the revisions, figuring that they were taking a while, but really looking forward to it. I didn’t know that Ms. A was emailing me (which, BTW, is why it’s fine to—occasionally—nudge an agent when you haven’t heard from them, in case they actually aren’t getting your emails!). But then I emailed her to see what was up, and she said she’d been trying me, and (all things happy) I received the revision--just when I was hitting "totally screwed." so I took forever once again to read it.

Only this time, it was really killing me to take so long. I had anticipated that Ms. A was going to be able to hit the mark (and I felt guilty about the last one), and was totally frustrated that I wasn't able to get to it.

But I did, and the next conversation would be a fun one. At that point, we’d been back in touch as I participated in the Baker’s Dozen agent auction—which, incidentally, was a hoot from the agents’ perspective. There was all manner of trash talking going on, and real intensity as we bid on the manuscripts. But at the same time, I was getting some comments ready for ANOTHER revision on the dystopian. It’s really close, but there were a couple of not unsubstantial elements I wanted to see tweaked.

At that point, though—right before Christmas—I realized that I was really acting like Ms. A’s agent. I had asked her to do a bunch of work on spec, which she did despite the lack of commitment on my part; and she was clearly going to be able to finish the job. And anyway, I liked it! And her! And knew that we’d be able to work together. So when we decided to talk about the revisions, I told her I would be very, very happy to represent her.

AUTHORESS: And now you know what was going on "behind the scenes" during the Baker's Dozen Auction. I was having twitch-fits every time Josh bid on something!

Josh’s much-anticipated email arrived on December 17. He said he was almost finished reading and wanted to have another phone conversation. He also said that he already FELT like my agent, but wanted to make it official.

That’s when I started dancing around the kitchen.

I was delighted to know that he already felt like my agent, because at that point I kinda felt like his client. And told him as much. So when we finally had our phone conversation three days later, it was with the knowledge that everything was good. Which made waiting for the phone to ring far less painful.

I mean, heck. I already had his name in my cell phone.

So there you have it. We had a virtual handshake and made our plans. As of this writing, I’ve just (as in JUST) sent him my latest revisions. We’ll see what happens next.

And, yes. We’re definitely going to continue the he said/she said through this process. So stay tuned! Because…you’re all a part of this journey.

The rest of this story hasn't been written yet!





*Josh offers his apologies to those of you who are waiting to hear from him.  He's working hard to catch up!

He Said/She Said: The Story Continues

(Read the first installment HERE.)


AUTHORESS: I’ll be honest. The name “Josh Getzler” wasn’t on my radar until the illustrious Dan Lazar of Writers House, in declining my invitation to be a Secret Agent, recommended I invite his colleague, Josh Getzler. Which I did. And subsequently received the fastest and most enthusiastic response imaginable. SIX MINUTES after I sent the email.

His opening line? “Sure, I’ll play!” I liked him immediately.

Once the contest had wrapped up, Josh surprised me by asking the following: “BTW—what were your favorites (if you read them all)? Did any of my choices surprise you?” Honestly, I’ve had wonderful experiences with many of my Secret Agents over the last two years, but Josh’s question displayed a level of graciousness and humility that made me smile.

Seriously. An agent asking me what I thought? It was so…human.

His name wasn’t on my List, though. You know how we get ideas in our heads? In mine, Josh was a “nice guy who reps adult mysteries and a bit of YA.” And that was that.

JOSH: So, I met the Divine Ms. A around a year and a half go when she asked me to be one of her Secret Agents and evaluate a bunch of 250-word partials from her readers (and what an amazing, loyal, interested and interesting group you are!). I looked at 36 beginnings, mostly of middle grade or young adult novels, and ended up signing the winner, Elissa Cruz, after reading the rest of her marvelous middle grade mystery.

I kept in occasional touch with Authoress, read the blog, and moved agencies from Writers House to Russell and Volkening a year ago November. You can read Elissa's interview with me, where I give my background (and a bit more info…), HERE.

When I began taking on my own clients in the Spring of 2008, I expected that the vast majority of my work would be in adult crime fiction. All kinds--procedurals, thrillers, cozies, historicals. Didn't matter. I specialized in these when I began at Writers House, but in the end only around half my books are crime fiction. I quickly discovered the appeal of commercial and literary fiction (which I'd worked on at Harcourt), but what I hadn't anticipated was the incredible creativity going on in the world of children's literature. Not just in the more obvious ways--Harry, Twilight, Wimpy Kid. But the real eye-opener came to me when everyone in my Writers House office started to talk about Hunger Games. And also because I began to see that the young adult and middle grade submissions I was getting frequently were more interesting and creative than the different variations on Jack Reacher and the DaVinci Code I was getting on the adult side.

So when I moved over to R and V after three fascinating years at WH, I was ready to expand my list to edgy and creative children's books.

Russell and Volkening has been around for 70 years, and represents such luminaries as Eudora Welty, Nadine Gordimer, George Plimpton, Anne Tyler, and Barbara Tuchman. When I joined, I had to convince the folks there that I was literary enough for them--quite a change from Writers House, where I needed to show I could be commercial! What you might notice about the list above is that many of the authors are either not living or not writing as much as they used to. Part of my job when I joined was to add a bit of vigor to the front list of books. The other agents have supported my aggressiveness in signing new clients, and I have been able to expand both my list and my sales over the course of the past year.

Which brings me to Authoress, and to why I'm writing this post with her. Six months or so ago, I received an email query from someone I didn't know. The first line introduced herself to me as Authoress and said "ok, you've been willing to read manuscripts by my blog readers, how about my own?" (Editor's note: Poetic license. I didn't say it quite like that! :P) It was a dystopian YA novel--right in the wheelhouse of my new list. I was excited and ready to read. And then...I got crazy busy and took a VERY long time to get back to her.

AUTHORESS: Really, it wasn’t THAT bad! I queried Josh in June of last year after I discovered he’d moved to Russell and Volkening. My query was already on the desk of someone at Writers House, so I was happy for the unexpected opportunity to send it to Josh. And he asked for the full the next day.

His request carried quite the caveat, though: He pointed out that he was “wickedly picky” about dystopians.

Um. “Wickedly picky” about the novel that had already garnered a colorful list of reasons-for-rejection? It didn’t bode well. Still, I trusted his response would be personal and detailed regardless of whether it was a “yes” or a “no.” Because that’s the way he is.

Turns out it was a “maybe.”


(to be continued)