How I Got My Agent

On January 3, 2022, I signed with a literary agent. Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary decided around two weeks prior to take a chance on my fun, high concept, but campy espionage novel. Yet even two days prior to signing, I still could not quite bring myself to believe it. We spent four hours on the phone on New Year’s Day discussing the near future and she reassured me this was no dream. After more than fifteen years of trying, my foot had finally managed to wedge itself past the threshold of the literary industry. How did this happen?  

A little bit of luck, the will of God (or connected energies of the Universe if the reader prefers), and a lot of perseverance. 

The story begins in 2003, when I started writing my first book. It took me three years to finish with my own editing and re-drafting, of what was still a monstrous, near 500-page behemoth. I didn’t know any better, as I had seen large science fiction novels on the shelves all the time. I learned I was supposed to find myself an agent to get published, so I queried off and on for two years. There were a few online articles and blogs on how to write a query, and it seemed easy enough. Two years later I allowed myself to become discouraged, and decided to self-publish.  

Self-Publishing back then wasn’t like today, where it’s easy to throw a book up on amazon. This isn’t to take anything away from the glorious journey if the Indy author, but I was active-duty Air Force. I didn’t have the luxury to sell my brand properly, nor did I have the connections or the means. And so, I fell victim to the Template Agency, iUniverse. I paid around 4,000 dollars to have my book edited and published. One can still find Fortress Earth online. Beware the Template Agency. Whether you try to go the independent route or tough it out like I did to find an agent and get traditionally published, no one should go bankrupt trying to publish a book. I never truly comprehend my mistake until I attended my first writers conference.  

At the Alaska Writers conference in Anchorage, Alaska, I learned the importance of word count for a first-time author in different genres. I learned the thought process an agent goes through on a query, and what they find cliché. I learned market trends, but more importantly, I learned how to hook, how to edit the first page, and how to write a log line. I would attend many conferences through the years as I wrote more books, and I got better at the face-to face pitch. I even got a few full requests from conferences, but none ever panned out.   

Armed with new knowledge, I sat down in 2008 to write a new book about a CIA Agent infiltrating a game show called Prime Time Spies. When I completed it more than a year later and sent out the first round of queries, it got a handful of requests which all later came back as rejections. I continued to query through the years and wrote three more books. I learned the value of finding critique partners and joined a forum of tough-love authors who would not let the small mistakes pass. Several members of the group went on to be published, and one is now an agent herself. All but one of my books received periodic manuscript requests, and after months of hope each agent declined. Prime Time Spies fell out of date and was shelved, absent from my query list while I concentrated on science fiction and fantasy titles.   

Cut to 2020 and I decide I need a new book to query while I tried my hand at a fantasy novel. I gave Prime Time Spies a complete overhaul, updating it from the technology of 2008 to something more modern. A network television show becomes a program to binge watch on a fictional streaming service, and the changes flowed from there. I send out a round of queries, to include Terrie Wolf. She rejected the project.   

I am usually thorough at tracking my queries. I use a website called duotrope.com which is helpful in staying organized. Since 2017 I have sent 527 queries on four different projects. Somehow, I forgot I had already queried Terrie and did not double check my history. With some agents this will get you an immediate rejection or a no response, but in this case, timing was everything. Terrie responded in an email that she was “smitten” and wanted to schedule a phone call.   

This is highly unorthodox, I thought to myself. She didn’t even make a request to see more of the manuscript. Instead, she explained on the call how she would like me to cut ten to fifteen thousand words and resubmit. At the time, Prime Time Spies sat at around 103,000 words. I knew it was a bit long, but there were many speculative elements to the story I thought would excuse a few more words for an adult project. Besides, the book had a history of at least getting full requests. I worked for four to six months to get the book into shape, the longer I took, the more I was certain Terrie would lose interest. At the start of 2021 she had a lot on her plate, and indeed it seemed I had taken too long, but when I resubmitted, I got a partial request.   

Three months later, I was told to go ahead and send the full. The partial and full requests both came via phone conversation, where she revealed more and more about how she was trying to figure out where she could sell my unique premise. I was encouraged, but after so many let downs, I didn’t get my hopes up. But the call did come, and I remember being so breathless after I received the good news I almost fainted and had to lower myself to the ground. My wife, hearing the excitement in my voice, ended up on the floor next to me. The moment we had waited for was finally here.   

So friends, there is a long journey ahead, and a lot of work to do. But I never lost faith. All it would take is for one person to believe in me, and now it feels as though the sky is the limit. It takes time to figure out our talents when we are young. It takes more time to decide which talents to pursue and make our bliss, but I believe where talent and perseverance collide, we find our destiny.