Big News!

Okay I’ve been AWOL for a while. Part of it was because of depression (thanks, brain!) but a lot of it was because of Pitch Wars. Then Pitch Wars turned into agent requests, and agent requests turned into many, many rejections.

Pro tip: when you’re in the trenches (the query trenches, that is), every time your mailbox tells you there’s a new email, you have a mini heart attack. So go get checked out by a doctor before you query agents. It might save your life.

Two weeks of rejections go by. Lots of “I loved this, BUT . . .” I did get a bunch of personalized rejections, which were cool. Got a lot of forms as well, which were also cool. Agents are hella busy, you guys. As a person who is Also Hella Busy, I can’t fault them for sending form rejections. I wish I could do that to some of my patients. But alas, cancer doesn’t work that way.

Another pro tip: QueryTracker is awesome. Use QueryTracker. But it will make you insane. But use it anyway.

Thanksgiving was approaching. I love Thanksgiving. Mostly I love making the turkey. I will literally fight anyone who tries to make the turkey. This is a well-documented fact in my family, and over the years there have been some contenders to the Turkey Throne, but they have all failed and been banished to the oubliette I had dug specifically for this purpose. Anyway, I was elbow-deep in turkey insides, getting ready to brine this birdie, and I got an email ding.

“Another rejection,” I thought. I still washed off and scrambled for my phone because OBVIOUSLY. And it was an email from Rena Rossner, one of the agents who requested my Pitch Wars MS.

Dear Sofiya, There is so much I love about this book! I’d love to discuss it further with you because I have some thoughts about it and some ideas for revision.

And at that point I blacked out in my kitchen.

Okay I didn’t actually black out, but my brain did that thing where all noise and thought stops and I just stared at the screen for a while and read that same line over and over.

Ideas for revision.

I know what that means.

My husband poked me and said, “Did you have a stroke?”

“Maybe.” And I told him what had happened and showed him the email.

He was not impressed. My husband is an engineer. He doesn’t understand what those few words meant.

“It means she likes it,” I said. “This is a test.”

“What kind of test?”

“We’re going to talk and if I’m not a total crazy weirdo person, this might go somewhere.”

“But you ARE a total crazy weirdo person.”

“Shut up, you don’t even know.”

“Does this mean you’re famous now?”

No, it didn’t. But Rena called me that day and we talked and she was awesome. She had a few ideas about my MS that I loved, and a few I wasn’t totally crazy about, but I’m good with feedback (it’s one of my super powers, along with eating all the cookies and falling asleep anywhere) and after thinking about it, I realized she was right.

She offered me representation. I played it cool. I was not cool. I was going bananas.

I emailed the other agents I had pages with. “Yes hello I have had an offer of representation you have 2 weeks to pass or what.” But more professional than that.

And those two weeks oozed by like drunk snails. Further passes rolled in. And then on December 9th, I emailed her back and accepted her offer of representation.

It still doesn’t feel real some days. Rena is a great agent, and the other authors she represents are such fun people. They are the reason I made a bookshelf sign. See those books? Those are my agent sibling books (I’ve added more since this picture was taken, but I still have a bunch to buy)!

I got a bunch of revision notes from her that I’m working feverishly on, and that, my friends, is why I’ve been AWOL from this blog and my other one.

So YAY there’s my big news! And my absentee excuse! But I’m close to done with these revisions (there will be more later I’m sure but this particular hill is about done), so I can get back to reading and reviewing and whatever else I feel like doing. Whee!