Ten years ago, back in June 2016, the literary agent Laura Longrigg (now retired) of MBA Literary Agents liked my submission and wanted to see the full MS of The Deserter's Daughter. And d'you know... I nearly deleted her email...
At the time I'd had various rejection letters. At one extreme I received one that took the term "standard rejection letter" to new heights by being so standardised that it applied to non-fiction writers as well as novelists; and at the other extreme, there was the one that raved about how publishable my book was, and ended with the words, "Good luck placing it elsewhere." Hm.
I'd also had a string of rejections along the lines of "compliment, compliment, but..." Ah, those buts!
At the time I didn't realise how lucky I was to get this feedback. I realise now that standard letters are the norm and personal rejections with comments are unusual. I was most fortunate to get these snippets of feedback.
And I used them. The compliments gave me a boost, but it was those buts I concentrated on. I also found some brilliant "how to" books that helped me sharpen up my writing.
The end result was another draft of the novel. In June 2016, I sent out email submissions around 4pm one Friday afternoon, intending to send paper submissions the following morning. (Are there any agents today who want paper submissions?) On the Saturday morning I glanced at my emails and there were two from literary agents. Automatic responses, of course - and I almost deleted them unopened.
ortunately for me,
Fortunately for me, I opened them instead. Yes, the first was indeed an automatic "thank you - we have received it" message. I opened the second one and my immediate thought, as my finger hovered over the delete button, was: That's a long automatic response.
nger obviously had more sense than I did, because it didn't hit delete
Well, my finger evidently had more sense than I did, because it didn't hit delete and that gave me time to read the message.... which was a personal email from Laura Longrigg at MBA, sent around 9pm on Friday evening, saying she had started reading my submission on the way home, was loving it and wanted to see the full MS.
Long story short. I ended up with offers of representation from two agents, but while I was enormously pleased and flattered by the second agent's interest, there was never any doubt in my mind. Various writer friends advised me to meet with both agents before deciding what to do, but I didn't feel the need for that. Out of the agents I submitted to, and also those I didn't get the chance to submit to because Laura responded so swiftly, she was always top of my list and I was delighted to be represented by her.
Laura retired a few years ago and now I am delighted to be represented by Camilla Shestopal of Shesto Literary.
As for the past ten years... Since 2017, I've had 25 book published under three different names and there are six more books in the pipeline. Two come out this September...
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....and the other four (two more Calico House and two more Red Cross Girls) will be released in 2027.
If you're in the querying trenches, good luck!
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