Congrats Brooks!

You may have seen the announcement, but Brooks Sherman is getting Bent. That is, today is his first day as part of the Bent Agency.

I'm fortunate enough to call Brooks my friend and he was actually my first reader on Unraveling way back in the day before I ever thought I'd be published. In fact, you can blame him for setting all this into motion.

A group of us went to lunch at Resto to celebrate his move.

I got all bundled up for the trek to the east side.

This was my first time at Resto which is a lovely favorite lunch place of the Brooks.

Once there, we toasted with the Sharkly Janet Reid who set up this celebratory lunch. She and Brooks both ordered Belgian Hungover Pasta (she's behind the napkin).

This, I think, was the winningest entree if you will. I stole a few bites of several of these entrees and I admit I'm a little jealous I didn't order the pasta.

The talented Jeff Somers (I just ordered his novel, Chum, because I am beyond excited to read it) sat next to Joanna and ordered a caesar salad and a grilled cheese.

Joanna had a kale salad and beef tartare.

Next to me, Dan Krokos had a burger and I went for the tuna sandwich, which was surprisingly spicy, but in a good way.

At the end of lunch we all went for coffee (americano) or tea (earl grey--this was me). Then we split the flourless chocolate cake (except for Janet who prefers her chocolate cake with flour). It was good, though it had peaches soaked in some kind of alcohol, which was a bit of a surprise!

It was a great lunch--and a long one--a perfect send off for Brooks. Before heading getting all bundled up again, we hugged it out.

Brooks is an awesome person, a talented agent, with pretty great taste in my opinion (of course, I'm biased), and I wish him so many great things at the Bent Agency. And if you know any querying writers, point them in his direction!

To Brooks!

How I Landed an Agent

Well, there was this guy...

Actually let me backtrack, because this is a pretty unconventional agent story and it requires some backstory.

When I was in high school, I fancied I was writing the Next Great American Novel. It was about three wealthy families with intertwined lives and the careless way they moved through life and left people and things broken behind them. It's was F Scott Fitzgerald inspired (poor guy he probably rolled over in his grave a few times) and it was unfinished at the time I went to a writing conference. Since I knew nothing about the industry, I went to this writing conference and signed up to pitch agents.

It did not go well.

At all.

For a lot of reasons. I was a painfully shy teenager (I swear I made it through sophomore year of high school and uttered under 10 words). I didn't know how to pitch a book. I was overwhelmed and unprepared and overly sensitive.

I'm also relatively sure the agent I sat down with was having a really bad day.

I left the pitch appointment in tears, left the conference without going to anything else, and went home. And in a way, I quit. I decided I would write for me because I loved it, and the publishing industry--and agents--just wasn't for me. (did I already explain I was overly sensitive and more than a little melodramatic?) There were plenty of other things I loved do

Fast forward 10 years and there was this guy...

This guy specifically.

The insanely talented Brooks Sherman is a friend of mine, and he'd just moved from working for a theater company to a literary agency. And (shockingly!) he really seemed to like his agency, enough that he was hoping to somehow weasel his way from intern to assistant there.

He was also part of a writing workshop of six people who got together once every two Thursdays and critiqued each other's work. When we were Christmas shopping last year, he mentioned someone was leaving the workshop and they were looking for another member. Because he knew I dabbled in writing sometimes, he encouraged me to join.

Because I don't easily say NO (it's harder than I think it should be) I said "of course I'll do it" (and then later I tried to think of ways to back out and failed).

At this point I had abandoned my attempts at copying F Scott. I'd written fantasy, paranormal romance, urban fantasy and was currently writing thrillers. But I never let anyone read anything. I saved manuscripts in different folders on my laptop and revised them sometimes when I was inspired or bored. I wrote a lot, but then I did the equivalent of shoving that writing into a drawer and just moving on to something else.

Which meant before the first workshop meeting, I was terrified. I emailed the first twenty pages of my current thriller to the group, felt a little like I might throw up, and then I tried to forget about it.

The first meeting and even subsequent ones were nerve wracking. I hadn't had anyone look at my writing since high school for a reason. Writing is extremely personal, it's something much bigger than just words on a page. I didn't know how to talk about it or how to listen to other people talk about it. But after the first meeting, I was beyond glad that I decided to do it. Writing might be solitary when it comes to first drafts, but it takes a lot of other people to make a manuscript take shape into a book.

Brooks and the people in the workshop were able to give me two huge things I needed. 1. Insight and fresh eyes that could spot plot holes and character flaws and 2. Confidence.

Because after a few workshop sessions, Brooks sang my manuscript's praises and swore it was something he would pick out of the slush pile. I took his edits (which were INVALUABLE) and thought about rethinking my attitude towards my own writing.

But then he talked about the manuscript at FinePrint's office and one of the agents said "tell her I want to see it."

Which is how I found myself emailing Janet Reid.

From there it was a whirlwind. Janet is as amazing, knowledgeable, funny, and as all around spectacular as Brooks said--and as she appears online. (Though I didn't know anything about her online presence before I met her). She reads fast and she talks even faster. She's so charming on the phone she manages to make me feel less awkward.

So far she's made me laugh a lot. And she's only made me cry once and that was later when she told me we had an offer on my book, so good tears.

And Brooks, the guy I owe a big thank you...he is an assistant at FinePrint now, and he's looking for his own projects now.

First published on 7/18/2011, this post in its original form can be seen on Brave New Words.

Becoming a "Writer"

When I was a kid, my goal never was to become a writer. I liked to write stories and especially draw accompanying pictures in elementary school, but I didn't ever say writer when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I wanted to be a surgeon, even though the sight of blood made me faint. I wanted to be a veterinarian at a zoo, even though, again, there was that whole blood problem, not to mention all the schooling. I wanted to be a flight attendant so I could travel the world for free. I even wanted to be a singer, never mind that I was tone deaf.

But I came from an abusive home. The environment creates a certain need for escapism. As a kid I was constantly daydreaming and envisioning my life as something different than it was. I watched movies and read books and imagined myself in that world as the heroine of my own adventure.

I also created a persona for who I was outside my house. Which means, I lied a lot. Like a lot. Before I even knew how awful it was. And my lies were elaborate with intricate details and safeguards. I told my kindergarten teacher my cat had eight kittens. (My family had a dog who was spayed). I described each kitten in major detail, gave each of them names, drew pictures of them for weeks, and when a parent of a fellow student asked if they could buy one of the kittens from my family, I told them we'd already promised them to people in our family.

Then of course, I grew up and got caught in a few lies and suffered the punishments, and realized that maybe wasn't the best way to go about life.

And I had an English teacher who saved me. Her name was Mrs. Hall, and she loved books with a ferocity that couldn't be anything but contagious. Every time she spoke, in class, in the hallway, to me or to someone else, I was captivated by how passionate she was. I wanted to be just like her.

So I read everything she recommended. I showed up at her classroom every day after school, even when she wasn't my teacher anymore. We discussed hundreds of books--the characters, the worlds, the language, the authors. Everything. 

She asked to read my stories, so I wrote them down. 

And she listened.

That encouragement drove me through high school, and writing itself became a staple in my life, something I did every time I had a free moment whether it was on my computer, in a notebook, on the back of a receipt or on a napkin. 

I tried to write the Great American Novel for a while, and then I read Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of Ages series. The characters and world became so alive and so inspiring that I realized I had it all wrong. Most of the stories I loved most (excluding Gatsby) were all fantasy or science fiction.

So I changed my focus, and I embraced the inner science fiction/fantasy geek inside me and somewhere along the line, I wrote Unraveling. Then Brooks Sherman and Janet Reid and a lot of other people helped make things happen.

First published 10/2/2011, this post can be seen in its original form on Brave New Words.