Andrea Mariana
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Follow Andrea at @AndreaMariana 89
Social media is a blessing and a curse for authors…
[...] 2023 seemed set to have no queer-specific pitch events at all. For someone writing queer-centric HistFic, that was a major bummer.
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Until a fabulous member of the Writing Community – Nicole Tota – proposed the idea of a pitch event to replace what had been LGBTNPit. A few DMs later, and I was officially on the #QueerPit contest board with the rest of the amazing QueerPit team. Our sole focus was preparing for a brand-new event set for August 1, 2023. We hit the pavement running before I think any of us even knew what exactly we were doing!
In a precious few weeks, we were racing toward our pre-contest hype events, seeing dozens of industry professionals accept our invitation and hundreds of writers prepping their pitches. I was both thrilled and terrified; as desperate as I was to see the event succeed for all of my queer writer friends who had supported me throughout the prior year, I was also so hopeful that my own pitches would get some traction.
In the end, I was successful beyond my wildest dreams: I ended QueerPit with six likes. Within the week, those likes had morphed into multiple full requests and my Burning Girls were flying out to agents all over the country (and even one across the pond to the UK). Somehow – my Burning Girls got noticed. I was in disbelief for the remainder of that wild week; it felt like something was changing, that this was different from the year before. The ground was shifting beneath my feet, and I wasn’t quite sure what was coming my way apart from certainty that it was coming fast.
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Finally, on the morning of my late August birthday, I got one hell of a present: an email I had waited two years for.
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Thanks so much once again for sending over the full manuscript for The Burning Girls. I’ve very much enjoyed reading it.
I was wondering whether you might have availability to speak sometime this week or next.
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A few moments later, with flawless timing, my little sis texted to wish me a happy birthday.
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As I come to the crux of this story, I cannot over emphasize this point: any one of the [four] agents who offered me representation could have been fabulous partners to me and I would have been proud to be a client to any of them. [...]
I chose to accept an offer from Tricia Lawrence at Erin Murphy Literary Agency. There were many reasons why I selected her offer; in the end, I think all of those reasons boiled down to how profoundly Tricia seemed to understand my Burning Girls and, by extension, understand me. Speaking with her felt like chatting with a friend I had known for years, a sensation that is both striking and, in my experience, quite rare.
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Astoundingly, I would never have queried Tricia had she not “liked” my QueerPit pitch despite the fact that she proved to be an ideal partner for me. Her agency, after all, primarily caters to the children’s and young adult age ranges, whereas I write in the adult/new adult categories. Had I simply read this information while doing querying research, I would have probably assumed that I was a poor fit for her list and never made the attempt. You never know who exactly it is you are really looking for – or who might be looking for you.
Mia Siegert
A thread for writers about perseverance and not quitting
August 18, 2022 - I almost died in surgery from acute complicated appendicitis. I had a miraculous surgery with a terrific surgeon, then one of the toughest years ever.
August 18, 2023 - One year later exactly, I signed with @writeloudly --& got in twitter jail/couldn't share.
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Back in time, before my first agent, I had 3 years of rejections. I remember at Goddard being told you have to try 78 times on a mss before shelving it. JERKBAIT had 77 rejections. 78, I kid you not, was the yes from my pub, which got me an agent
It was a few years between that and SOMEBODY TOLD ME, which released at the start of the pandemic, April 7, 2020... the day Cardinal Pell's charges were dropped for the atrocious sex crimes he committed. Stuff happened. I left my agent.
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I did a #pitmad too soon after I left and was overwhelmed because I had over 200 likes... and I was too scared to hit send. I think I accidentally hurt feelings. I should have sent messages to say, "I am scared to send this." I was broken and imposter syndrome won.
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A couple years passed with nothing. I couldn't write a word. I got covid. I went to do a show in NH but was hospitalized after almost dying in emergency surgery. I had a home invader. I lost my disability hearing thanks to a sexist, antisemitic lawyer who laughed at my PTSD.
I planned to quit but my idol [Katori Hall] wrote the following, "Keep on keeping on! We need your voice ESPECIALLY right now". I did. Katori, you gave me the courage to enter #QueerPit & less than 2 months later I [had] a new lit agent. Thank you so much.
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It was interesting with #QueerPit because I woke up with a horrid migraine, saw it, decided on a whim, why not, and put my pitch [up]. I went back to bed, getting up only to throw up, then eventually checked twitter.
Then some requests came in! I hustled for instructions, garbage bag next to me on the bed, then sent out my mss super late at night and went to bed. Because whatever, right? It happens when you DON'T expect it, folks. Seriously.
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[Sera Rivers] was the person who checked all the boxes. Someone who I believed 100% believed in me. By this point, from when I started initially querying, it's been ~12 years and pretty sure thousands of rejections along the way. I stress that because it's NOT EASY.
Now I'm sitting here, having devoured most of a slice of red velvet cheesecake for breakfast, realizing Monday we're having a meeting to discuss edits and how to proceed. Discouraged writers, it takes time AND diligence. So I'm quoting Katori Hall, "Keep on keeping on."
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John Klekamp
Read John's Success Story by Michelle Hazen on
Sanctuary Editorial
Sera Rivers and I met at the SCBWI Winter Conference in NYC in 2022. I'd opted for a one-on-one manuscript critique session. And based on her wish list, I thought we might click. Sera loved the voice of my character, Adam, and the premise for the story. She felt it was timely and had commercial appeal. She encouraged me to lean into certain elements of the story and keep in touch.
In the summer of 2023, I dropped a couple of twitter pitches into #QueerPit. Sera recognized my story from my tweets and sent me a direct message, asking that I send her the finished manuscript, which I did. Immediately. Months went by, and I saw she'd signed another #QueerPit author, so I figured that was it. She'd found someone, and it wasn't me. Game over. But I decided to nudge her, and Sera assured me she was going to read my manuscript next and that she hoped to get back to me in early December. And she did.
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Sera and I chatted over Zoom, me blushing with all the nice things she had to say about the book and its potential, making caveats like, "If we end up working together," until she finally said, "You realize I'm making you an offer of representation." I hadn't. I needed her to spell it out.
Jenna DeVillier
Jenna's Success Story
In July 2023, I finished revising TOUCH OF STONE to a level I was happy with, and participated in QueerPit on Twitter on August 1. I thought that would be a good launching point for TOUCH, which I had already been gushing about for months on Twitter. I got a couple of agent likes, which I was excited about, including one from Jamie Vankirk at Rainbow Nerds Literary.
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On August 27, Jamie reached out with a partial request, which I sent right away. Then the next day, August 28, she upgraded to a full! Something must have been working with TOUCH OF STONE that wasn’t working with POISON MORE DEADLY. I sent off the full and crossed everything.
Two days later, Jamie emailed back. She loved TOUCH OF STONE, but there were a couple of things that weren’t quite working in the story. She sent about a page and a half of notes, mentioning if they resonated with me, she would love to see a revision.
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My first ever R&R! Now, I normally HATE revising. Drafting is my favorite. But the moment I read Jamie’s notes, they felt RIGHT. I was actually excited to revise! Her main note was that my love interest felt out of place in the story, and would work better if she was a girl. It was one of those notes that felt so obvious when I read it, but when I was drafting, I was so focused on bringing in real figures/moments from Greek myth I hadn’t even thought about it. I almost laughed out loud when I read it at my own foolishness. I emailed Jamie back the next day and enthusiastically accepted her R&R ideas. I let her know, since the revision wouldn’t be extremely extensive, I could probably get it back to her in eight weeks. In the meantime, Jamie asked if I had anything else finished she could read. I sent her POISON MORE DEADLY. Why not?
After that, I [...] I re-outlined, brainstorming new scenes and rearranging others to address the other facets of Jamie’s R&R. My first instinct was to make an existing character my MC’s new love interest, to make it easier on myself. I spent almost 2 weeks agonizing over that, and it just didn’t feel right. I got myself stuck, and I couldn’t figure a way out of it. I finally realized the love interest needed to be an entirely new character, which meant every scene would be impacted, even if only in a small way, because there was suddenly another competitor on the scene.
But it worked. The new outline came together after that, and I had such a fun time crafting Bas’s character! Revising had never felt so rewarding, because not only did I have a roadmap and concrete goals that came from someone besides myself, I could tell every time I sat down to work that the book was noticeably improving.
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On October 27, I FINALLY finished my revision on TOUCH OF STONE. I sent Jamie the new version, and sent my full to the requesting agent from DVPit (yes, I sent the new query letter before I was completely finished, and sent the partial a few days earlier. No, I do not recommend this if you have anxiety, but it definitely motivated me to finish LOL). So, at this point I had 3 fulls out, a shiny new query letter and synopsis, and I was ready to dive back into querying. I had done the research: I knew only about 1/3-1/2 of R&R requests come back with an offer of representation, but I felt SO GOOD about this revision. Apart from that moment of doubt in the first 2 weeks, the entire process had been so much fun and so rewarding. It just felt different, even from the 11 requests POISON MORE DEADLY racked up.
So I blasted queries out. 20, to be exact. If I did happen to get an offer, I wanted as many queries out as possible.
And then, 4 days later (on Halloween!), I saw an email notification pop up on my phone while I was at work. It was from Jamie. The preview only showed the first line or so, and all I saw was: “Hi Jenna! I just finished reading your revision of TOUCH OF STONE, and I thought you did a fantastic job.”
I’ve been in the trenches for 8 years at this point. I didn’t want to get my hopes too high. I knew all too well the next line could be, “Unfortunately, it just didn’t quite pull me in enough to make an offer.” I grabbed my phone and went outside to read the email. I knew, whether it was a pass or an offer, I would probably cry. With shaking hands, I opened the email and read it under a tree.
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I did manage to hold myself together until I got inside, where I promptly went into a bathroom stall and burst into tears LOL. It was both surreal and not at the same time, somehow. Every step of the process with Jamie had gone better than I ever could have hoped. I even told her, when I sent the revision back, that even if it didn’t work out, I was so grateful she pushed me to do this revision, because it made the book SO much better.
I really don’t know how I got through the rest of that work day. I don’t remember it at all! I did manage to reply to Jamie’s email and coordinate a call for the following afternoon. I was a little nervous for the Call, but I printed out some questions and had a notebook ready for notes. Everything went great! Jamie was just as kind and supportive as she’d always been on our email thread, and she had great plans for another round(s) of revision for TOUCH OF STONE and future submission.
After I got off the phone with her, I spent an hour and a half nudging all the agents who still had my materials: 3 with the full (including one who had requested that morning before my call with Jamie), and 21 with just the query and first pages. I set the deadline for November 17, so 16 days after my call. It was a little longer than the usual 2 weeks, and I knew I would be going crazy until then, but I was going to YallFest from the 9th-12th, and I thought a Friday deadline made more sense than midweek.
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In the end, I did receive another offer of rep, but ultimately decided to go with Jamie. I already knew her editorial style and vision because of our R&R together, and everything she said on the call about how she handles client edits, submission, how quickly she responds, and her enthusiasm for my writing was a dream come true. I’m so excited to see where we go from here!