Monday, March 30, 2015

Getting the Call with Kristin Wright

Choices, choices! We all love to have choices, though sometimes it's not that easy. Lucky for Kristin she had options and her heart told her where to go! Congrats Kristin, and I'm glad you found a CP through Query Kombat. 




Getting the Call for me managed to be BOTH the super-fast fairy tale and the end of a long querying slog through the trenches. How? I queried two manuscripts at once.
I wrote and polished my romantic women's fiction novel TWENTY MILES IN just in time to submit it to last August's PitchWars. I did a little midnight dancing when I saw I'd been chosen as an alternate, and then settled in for the wait. PitchWars is excellent practice for the professional waiting that writers sign up for. The entries are posted in early November, two months after selection, to allow time for edits.  I edit fast (my mentor, Kara Leigh Miller, went way above and beyond for TMI), and still had enough time to write another manuscript .
I got requests in PitchWars, though none that panned out. I queried it through November and December, with a short flurry at the beginning of January when agents re-opened after the holidays. I sent the last query for TMI on January 6. Meanwhile, I'd been editing my other manuscript, FARB, and was ready to query that one by January 21.
With FARB, I got the fairy tale. Within two weeks, I had six full requests. On day 14, I sat in a work meeting with my iPad, and an email arrived from Agent A, who wanted to chat about FARB, which she'd requested only the day before. I read the email ten times. I contemplated escaping the meeting by yelling "Fire." I restrained myself and suffered through. Agent A's call, though, turned out not to be The Call. She wanted some minor revisions before offering. She did offer, though, a week later. That email came while I sat in the car, about to embark on an afternoon of driving my kids around to lessons with no computer handy. 
While my kids sawed away on their violins, I sent my flurry of emails to all the agents with either requested materials or open queries on either manuscript--on my phone. And then I checked my email at stoplights. Yes, I know. Bad. The blizzard of responses came quickly, and from agents with queries on both manuscripts. When it stopped, I had 12 agents reading one or both fulls.
The next day, Agent B emailed asking to "chat" about FARB. (I don't know why they like this word so much. They do.) Agent B offered in the first two minutes. Then came the really draggy part. I'd given a nine-day period. Nothing at all happened for seven days. The night before the deadline, I got an email from Agent C. She'd liked TWENTY MILES IN and wanted me to extend the deadline for her to read FARB. I chose not to, because I didn't think it was fair to Agents A and B, but I hated writing that email.
Minutes before I went to bed, I got an email from Agent D, who'd been the recipient of the very last query I sent for TWENTY MILES IN because she'd been closed. She wanted to chat the next morning. She'd "love loved" my work, and I loved her back just based on her interviews and Twitter feed. During the call, we talked about the book. She'd stayed up late reading it, and already had a submission list in mind. She was ready to go--with this book, with my other manuscripts, and with any other books I might write in the future. I emailed several of her clients, and within the hour, got back long love letters about her. I really liked the other offering agents and would have been very happy with either of them, but the decision was made.
Now, I'm delighted to say I'm represented by Sarah E. Younger of the Nancy Yost Literary Agency!

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I live in Virginia with my family, our stinky beagle, and our elderly guinea pig. I'm an attorney now, but I've been a Civil War reenactor, an ice cream scooper, a telemarketer, and a U.S. Senate intern. I'm a veteran of both Query Kombat and PitchWars, both in 2014, and will tell anyone who asks that contests are absolutely worth it because that's how you meet your critique partners. I write women's fiction and romance, and dream of a day when someone magically shows up at my door to manage my website and Facebook page for me.  The website is www.kristinbwright.com.

1 comment:

  1. Love these stories! I'd like to check out her website, but the link is either broken or incorrect. :(

    ReplyDelete