Ah! I’m writing a HIGMA post! Excuse me while I do a painfully awkward happy dance…yep, there I go…you should be glad you aren’t seeing this. The arm waggling alone is…truly dire. Whatever you’re picturing? Worse.
OKAY. With that out of the way, let’s get this show on the road! This is gonna be a long one, so grab a coffee and settle in.
How It Started
Most folks begin these with when they started writing the book that got them their agent, but I’m gonna rewind a ways back. The book that got me my agent, KINGFISHER, was the first I queried, but I came in a bit late to the querying game.
By the time I tossed myself into the proverbial trenches, I had been writing seriously for upwards of 10 years. I’d written around four books, gone to multiple conventions both in person and virtual, taken several writing classes, started a bookish YouTube channel, been published as a poet, studied as a developmental editor, and even gone to a writing summer camp in high school (you know, like a cool kid). I KNEW I wanted to publish books, but fear and perfectionism kept me from ever tossing my hat in the ring, so I just studied and wrote and studied some more well into my twenties.
So, as much as I’d love to hop on my soap box and say that my speedy querying experience was purely the result of my enormous talent…it’d be disingenuous not to mention that I spent a LOT of time writing before I ever became a querying writer.
When I started KINGFISHER in April 2022, I felt that perhaps I’d stumbled on the idea that I would finally submit to real-life agents. Romantasy was thriving in the wake of books like ACOTAR, and for the first time I felt like publishing was hitting a trend that I could deliver on. I’ve never written to the market, but it felt like now the market was calling for something I’d been doing for years.
I finished the first draft right before Christmas of 2022. Usually, this would be when I’d pick up a new project, draft something else. Maybe revise one of the other projects left to rot in my Scrivener files. But KINGFISHER would not leave my head. I had so many plans for revision, and I wanted to write them NOW. So, in February of 2023, I started planning draft two.
Reader, I ripped that sh*t apart.
Names changed, magic systems formed, characters I killed off in the first draft got a second chance at life, and the entire third act was scrapped and reformed from scratch. It wasn’t so much a revision as it was a complete and total rewrite. But it was going really well. I was proud of it. I might be able to query this by the fall! I thought.
Then I found out I was pregnant.
Here’s Where It Gets Weird
Yep! Right as I raced towards the end of my second draft, the world halted. Baby was ON. THE. WAY. It wasn’t a surprise, if you must know—this was very much on the radar—but it was my first. Still, I thought nothing could slow me down. After all, how taxing could it be to sit at the computer and type?
More the fool I. Nothing could have prepared me for the fatigue of the first trimester. Not just physical, but mental. Thinking was exhausting. It wiped me out to plan what to have for dinner that evening, much less to write a brand new ending to a book.
So I stopped. Took a long break until the second trimester dawned along with the ability to form thoughts again. In the end, I finished draft two in February of 2024, a full year after I started it.
But it still wasn’t ready. It needed at least another pass, maybe two. And my baby’s due date at the end of April was a ticking clock hanging over my head, playing in harmony with the tick-tok-tick-tok of the Romantasy trend in publishing.
I decided I had to finish at least another draft before my son was born (which I did in mid-April, just around two years after starting draft one). Then I’d take a break from writing for at least a month while I adjusted to being a mom. To keep myself from writer’s guilt, I put my book in the hands of a trusted editor I met through a raffle for a first chapter critique the year before. She’d have it until June. I told myself that would give me time away from writing and ease the mental strain of figuring out what I still had left to fix all alone. Then, with those revisions in mind, I’d do one last draft over the following months and start querying officially in January of 2025.
…And Weirder
Well, here we are, and it’s not January of 2025. So, Aly, what happened? Are you ever going to get to the point of this post? Well, okay, keep your pants on, I’m getting there. Rude.
Fair, but rude.
In the months leading up to my son’s birth, pitch events boomed on Twitter (sorry I truly cannot call it X). Unlike the traditional events which had always been limited to submission-ready projects, many of these pitch trends welcomed works in progress. So, I happily joined in on the fun, and when agents liked my posts, I added them to a list of agents to submit to when I started querying. All told, I got about 6 or 7 agent likes across multiple posts.
Now is a good time to mention that I’m in a few writing discords with some pals. I highly, HIGHLY recommend you find your own little corner of the writing community. Discords, group chats, beta matchups, what have you. That could be a whole other newsletter, though, so I’ll spare you the tangent for now.
The important thing is that many of my friends in these discords had been in the trenches before. They knew how slow this industry moves, so they proposed an addendum to my plan: go ahead and query the agents who liked my pitches and any who I wanted to submit to that might be closing soon. No doubt by the time any of them got back to me, I’d already be well into my next revision. I could use those first handful to test the strength of my query package and when the inevitable rejections swarmed in, maybe a few would have some actionable feedback I could add to my list of revision notes from the editor.
So, I sent out seven queries. Three to agents who had liked my pitches, one to an agent my critique partner referred, and three to agents I simply admired and wanted to catch before they closed. Only, the VERY FIRST AGENT I submitted to was asking for the full manuscript for all pitch likes. Woof! Still, I figured nothing would come from it, sent off the full, and refocused my attention to baby things.
The next full request hit my inbox the day after I sent it. Then another, a few days later. Another hit my inbox as I labored in the hospital. By the start of May, literal days after giving birth, six out of the seven agents had requested additional materials in some form or another. I was elated but also TERRIFIED.
Only when I received requests did it occur to me that I never actually…expected anyone to do that. This was not supposed to be happening. I didn’t feel like the book was truly ready, and I was especially unhappy with the second half of the book, which got a speedier revision pass than I would have liked because of my baby-induced deadline. A whole half of the book that these agents were about to read.
Suddenly I was regretting everything. Each request pricked me a little inside as I anticipated the moment when the agent rolled their eyes, realized that I was a horrible writer after all, and gleefully hit the “reject” button. “What inane drivel,” they’d say, sipping brandy in their lush robes by a Victorian fireplace, “how disappointing.”
And, well, one by one most of the agents who’d requested materials did pass, though rather than twirling their villainous mustaches and mocking me for my folly, they were all kind and offered valuable feedback. I called this first batch a wash, as I’d always expected it to be, making a note to maybe requery some of them down the line after edits. First, though, I just needed my editor to get back to me and help me set my head on straight.
And so she did! In the first week of June, a little over a month after my baby was born. Her edits were…spectacular. In a month, she’d managed to unlock the solution to just about every problem I (and, as it turned out, agents) had with the manuscript. Hiring an editor is, of course, never a requirement in traditional publishing, and frankly I might not have ever done it if my circumstances were different. But oh boy was I grateful for my decision that day! It lit a fire under my butt to jump into edits and get the book into shape for my January 2025 deadline.
Until a couple hours later, when another email hit my inbox.
Surprise!
It was that very first agent—the one who’d had my full right from the jump thanks to a #questpit post—and she wanted to hop on a call. She told it to me straight: the book needed work. It wasn’t perfect. But she saw potential and wanted to work with me to get it up to scruff.
I shook. I cried. I ran to discord (where, as it happened, another friend had just received an equally exciting email from her now-agent!). Agented friends kindly handed me materials to ask for The Call…because that’s what this was. The Call. I couldn’t believe it.
At my friends’ suggestion, I sent out some more queries. With a newborn, I didn’t have the time or energy to do a full sweep, so I selectively sent out seven more queries to agents I respected who represented some of my favorite authors.
This time, the rejections came in pretty quickly. Forms, mostly. But a few agents did request, and their interest alone was a huge ego boost. Their rejections were too, strangely.
Then it was time for The Call. This is another topic that could be its own post, but suffice to say it went beautifully. I’d never seen someone (other than me) have so much enthusiasm for my books, for my characters. After so many years of writing being a pretty solitary endeavor, sharing only with my critique partner or little snippets on discord, it was unreal to see a real life publishing professional look me in the eyes and tell me they were a fan of my work. That they wanted to work with me. Me!
I told her I’d have a decision in two weeks. In the meantime, I notified the other agents who had my materials, spoke with her clients, and reviewed the agency’s contract, all things I’d learned to do from hours of research scrolling on my phone while my son napped. More kind passes followed until I only had three agents left outside of the offering agent. My decision deadline was June 26th—hilariously, my birthday.
That would have been a fun story, agented on my birthday, but it wasn’t to be. A few days before the deadline, an agent with my partial asked for the full. Then, the morning of the 26th, another agent with the full—one of those heavy-hitters I’d queried “just to see”—requested an extension. He’d had some computer trouble and wasn’t able to finish the book in time, but he’d liked what he read so far.
Reader, I’ll be honest. I’d all but made my decision at this point. My email to the agent was drafted and ready to go, I had already started surface level revisions in stolen moments with my laptop after my son fell asleep. But this other agent was solid. I respected him, and I felt like I owed it to myself to see where the chips fell.
So I gave it another week. Let the initial offering agent know. Paced the floor (metaphorically, of course…I was still nap-trapped by a squirming baby all hours of the day).
Finally, my inbox pinged…and it was a pass.
You know that feeling when someone asks you something like, “Do you want burgers or pasta for dinner?” and you say “Oh, whichever is fine.” But then they shrug and say, “All right, pasta it is,” and your heart lurches the tiniest bit because damn it, turns out you wanted the burgers all along.
This was the opposite of that. I read that pass with a stupid grin on my face, because the relief I felt proved my gut instinct right: I’d already found my agent weeks ago. And now, I could finally hit SEND on that email I’d had drafted since…well, right after the call, if I’m honest.
And that’s how I ended up signing with my agent, Emily Forney at BookEnds Literary!
If anything I hope my story just goes to show how absolutely unpredictable the publishing industry can be. I was bracing myself for a rough uphill climb and instead found myself in an uncontrollable slip-n-slide.
Reading other folks’ HIGMA posts who sent out hundreds of queries over multiple years, one of the major talking points they echo is that “it only takes one.” My sample size might have ended up a bit smaller, but that’s the exception that proves the rule. I just found my “one” a little quicker thanks to sheer luck and half decent canva skills (thank you, mood board). This book needed an editorial agent who loved its characters and story enough to see its flaws and still want to champion it. That is rare, and I’m lucky to have found it in Emily at all, much less so soon.
I also hope this maybe encourages folks to shoot their shot. If I’d listened that little voice in my head that constantly told me to wait, to hold off on participating in the writing world until I was absolutely positive that everything was juuust right, I wouldn’t be writing this post right now. Put in the work, make your story the best it can be, query carefully, and please please please work on your craft, of course! But get out there, be involved in the writing community, take chances! And if you can’t bring yourself to silence that little voice even then, by god, get some friends who’ll help you drown it out.
That was a good read. Wow, a lot of weird things...happening so quickly, unexpectedly, while intending to query in '25 then a new baby AND query responses. Your "voice" is very readable and funny! ✨