To
celebrate my literary agency, BookEnds’s, 20th anniversary this
year, I thought I’d relate the story of how I came to be a client of the
founder, the incomparable and awe-inspiring Jessica Faust.
I worked on
getting published for years; I briefly had an agent who did absolutely nothing
and quit after trying to sell one book to one publisher and failing. But
eventually I made it, and became a published author of Regency romances. From
1999 to 2005 I wrote Regencies for Zebra, an imprint of Kensington.
Using that
as a springboard, I found a great agent at a good agency. When the Zebra imprint
closed I already had a wonderful deal to write paranormal historical romances
for Berkley; Awaiting the Moon, a werewolf historical romance, came out in
2006, followed by two more books in the contract… but my series was not renewed
after that. It just didn’t find an audience. I was thrilled to get a contract
with Sourcebooks Casablanca to write a historical mystery series, beginning
with Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark. However… there was a fundamental
misunderstanding between the publisher and I; I considered it a historical
mystery series, but they marketed it as a historical romance series. That
didn’t end well, and they declined to publish the 2nd and 3rd
book of the series.
It was 2009,
and, as you can see, I had been through a few rough patches in the publishing
industry. I liked my agent very much. We worked together well, and I had gone
with him when he left the agency he worked for. However… he was going in another
direction, pursuing his love of agenting cookbook authors and chef biographies.
I knew what
I wanted… I wanted (and had always intended) to write mysteries. So I talked to
him (honesty and being upfront is always the best policy) and I think with a
sense of relief we both came to the conclusion that I should start hunting for
a new agent. I thought with my background it should be easy. So I came up with
a mystery series idea (which I still love, and hope to work on someday) and
fleshed it out to a proposal, and started agent-hunting.
Even with a
decent list of published credits, trying to find an agent can be a disheartening
process. I was careful and selective, only approaching agents who represented
the kind of book I wanted to write. Of course, there was one agent who I
wanted, and really ONLY her, but I wasn’t dumb enough to think I should only
approach her. The one agent above all others was, of course, Jessica Faust, of
BookEnds Literary.
After a
reasonable time with my proposal, she wrote back that though she liked my
voice, and was intrigued by the mystery, it just wasn’t quite right. Encouraged
by her kind words, I wrote back, asking for advice, and asking if I came up
with something else, would she consider looking at it?
First, she
told me she was going on mat leave for SIX
MONTHS… I was bummed. Six months? That’s a lifetime when you’re a
struggling author with no money coming in. However, she also gave me some sage
advice; she told me that if I wanted to write cozy mysteries (that’s what I’d
told her I was writing, though I now see what I had presented to her wasn’t
really a cozy at all) that I should get the first book of several series and
read them.
So I did.
Then I wrote (and rewrote, and re-re-wrote) the first chapters and a synopsis
for the Vintage Kitchen Mysteries, taking my love of vintage recipes and
collecting vintage kitchenalia, creating Queensville MI, and giving it a
backstory (locations in cozy mysteries, Jessica told me, are like another character…
a good location could sell a series) and I waited until a few days after she
was back to taking submissions; I figured I’d be among hundreds, if I submitted
the first day she was back. I submitted my fresh proposal and then I waited.
The email
came back pretty fast; she had some suggestions, but she loved it, and she took me on as a client in January, 2010. It was
the best day of my writing career, bar abso-freaking-lutely none. From there,
once we signed, she presented it to Berkley and they bought the series, and the
rest is history.
I’m a lucky
LUCKY writer, and I know it.
Thank you
Jessica, and all of BookEnds, and congratulations on #bookends20!
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