Katja Kaine: How I Got My Agent (And a Six Figure Book Deal!)

AKA My thirteen year writing journey from doe-eyed dreamer to serious author…

I devoured these ‘How I Got My Agent’ articles while I was in the query trenches¹. Doing so was part inspirational, part research and part sticking a finger into an open wound and wiggling it around.

As I read them, much as one does their acceptance speech into their hairbrush (or feathered quill, as the case may be), I would dream of the day I would finally get to write my own.

And it is dizzying and surreal to be here writing this now.

I set my intention to become a published author over thirteen years ago, and while most of that time I didn’t worry too much (because if I wasn’t good enough, I would just keep getting better…) there were certainly times when I seriously questioned whether I had what it took –whether I was cut out for this, or whether I should just give up.

I learned so many things on my journey: I found my tribe, found my voice, and found what really drove me.

I hope that sharing my story with you will help you find your motivation, and give hope to those of you struggling through the heartbreak and brutality of the query trenches.

The status quo: Setting the intention to be a writer and finding my process

Like many writers, I have been dabbling in writing short stories since I was a child, but when my thirtieth birthday arrived I realised that if I genuinely wanted to achieve my dream of becoming a writer, I needed to start getting serious.

It was 2010, and I set myself a goal of being published within ten years. I thought that was fairly realistic – modest even – and plenty of time to achieve my dream.

Of course the first step to becoming published was to write a novel, and so that’s where I started. I focused all my energy and all my spare time on writing.

It took me about a year to write my first novel, and finishing it was easily one of the greatest achievements of my life. It felt like an impossible task, and the first was definitely the hardest to write. Each novel since then has not only been better, but also easier, so hopefully that’s reassuring!

When I first sat down to write, I felt sure that it would be madness to simply start writing at page one, and see what happened. The risk of meandering myself into a dead end felt so high, it just didn’t seem an option.

Since then I have learned about this strange breed of writers called ‘Pantsers’ (people who write without a plan – or ‘by the seat of their pants’) and when I first heard about them, I genuinely didn’t believe they could be real. Once I accepted they were not fictional, and in fact wrote genuinely excellent books, I realised there was a lot I could learn from them – and have.

However, back then I was what I now know is called a confirmed ‘Planner’ (someone who meticulously plans their story before beginning to write).

Before I started writing my story, I planned the plot down to the smallest detail, spent hours investigating the inner lives of my characters and drew maps and sketches of all my locations, listing everything that would be experienced by each of the senses in turn.

I carried on this way for a few years, learning everything I could about writing from craft books – learning about the hero’s journey, about drawing from theatre in order to make your characters come to life, learning the mechanics of sentence, paragraph and scene.

The other major thing that happened during this time was that I began to feel bogged down with trying to keep track of my notes, my different scene drafts, my character sheets and everything else. I found I had a combination of hand written notes and lots of Word documents in complex folder structures that were very difficult to keep track of, and I was spending a lot of my time on frustrating admin.

I found that either I had to spend ages keeping everything carefully in order, which took away precious writing time, or I would sack that off, focus on the fun creative parts, but then come back to a bomb site of research debris, which would be even more tedious to sort out.

There were software apps out there for writers, but none of them really worked for me. However, as luck would have it, I’d just hired a developer to work alongside me in my day job as a freelance web designer.

So I quickly knocked up a sketch of a programme that could help me manage my writing. I knew I wanted sections for characters, scenes, locations and notes, and I wanted it to keep track of my writing progress: how many words I’d written each day and how close I was to my word count goal – that sort of thing.

Then I asked my developer to build it – and that was when The Novel Factory was born.

Since I was finding the software useful for my own writing, I thought it made sense to release it into the world, in case anyone else found it useful too. I sold licences for a very low price, and it supplied a tiny trickle of income alongside my day job.

The other pain point I had identified was that although I had read a load of books on the craft of writing by this point, I always found it hard to locate the useful tips and techniques I’d learned when I was actually knee-deep in writing the book. I didn’t want to break my flow in order to stop and refresh my memory by scouring and then re-reading whole chapters of those books.

What I needed, I thought, was the information to be sorted in a way that allowed me to access exactly what I wanted at the right time.

So I set about thinking about what order I would want to do things in (The Snowflake Method was a huge influence on my writing process, as much as the hero’s journey was on my understanding of story structure), and then making notes from each of my favourite resources and putting them into logical progression.

And so my second writing baby was born: The Novel Writing Roadmap. It focuses on what’s important to me, which is efficiency and practical, repeatable processes.

I believe that as well as every writer having a different process, each writer writes each of their books slightly differently. While my process has evolved over time (I’ve embraced pantsing as much as I can, and I love it) I still regularly return to the Roadmap and check off the tasks.

So, I had my tools – now I knew I had to put the hours in, because the best way to improve at something is to do it.

So I wrote more novels. Some of them I only wrote a first draft of, and realised I didn’t have enough passion for the story to go through the gruelling process of editing them over several more drafts (one of which was – naturally – a Harry Potter rip-off) and others I got to the stage where I thought they were probably publishable (sweet, innocent me).

Inciting incident: Initial forays into agent representation

Photo by Bluebird Images on Unsplash

In 2012 I merrily sent off submissions to about ten agents from the top literary agencies in the UK.

Practical note about submissions for those of you who are new to this – when you first submit, you don’t send the whole novel, but a ‘taster’ consisting of:

• The first three chapters (or 10,000 words)
• A single page synopsis
• A cover letter

While most of them came back as form rejections – I was delighted to get a full request – which means the agent asked me to send the full manuscript (novel) to her. This is sometimes shortened to just ‘full’, as in – ‘She’s asked me to send her the full’ or ‘How many fulls do you have out with agents?’

Everything was going completely to plan! I was on track and on target. I figured within a few years my books would be on the shelves.

Needless to say, in December 2012 the full manuscript came back with a rejection:

Hello Katja,

Sorry for my late reply – things here got a bit carried away before the office closed.

Now – about Hidden Depths. I did like it. I liked the voice, the family, the set up and the story.

However two concerns stopped me from really falling for it: firstly, the pace. I felt that the story moved rather too slovenly for my liking. I think to write successfully for this age group you need to grab the reader by the throat and not let them go, as the saying goes. Now obviously with a book like yours you have to balance the pace with the mystery of what is going on, and the reveals of the different worlds, and I do understand what a difficult balancing act that is. But I think my second concern – if addressed- could help balance this. That is the tension. I never really felt the threat of the world, I didn’t feel tense, or scared. The darkness of the children disappearing was not explored fully enough. I think the threat of the world has to feel more real, and darker, and with this the pace will pick up.

I really hope you don’t feel discouraged by this email, there are many things I liked about your writing. However, in this market which is so very difficult I do not think that Hidden Depths as it stands would be likely to find a publisher. Should you want to work on the pacing and the tension and add a greater degree of darkness into the world, I would be more than happy to read a redraft of Hidden Depths.

Wishing you a lovely Christmas, and hope to hear more from you soon…

All best,

(Agent name)

This sort of feedback is gold dust for aspiring authors, and I cherish it to this day. What the agent said was spot on, and was excellent feedback – not enough tension and conflict is something I also notice now when reading the work of newer writers.

However, by the time I received it I was already working on my next novel, and by the time I got to addressing her feedback, she had left the industry! This is something that happens quite a lot…

But that was okay, I told myself – I just have to write a better novel…

Fun and games: Honing my craft

Now I was a good few years in, and I was starting to feel the bite of isolation. I was starting to get the feeling I could really do with some outside eyes on my work.

I had been avoiding the idea of joining a writing group – basically out of fear – but I decided that if I wanted to get better, I needed to pluck up the courage and bite the bullet and maybe someone would help me out with mixing metaphors.

So I joined Reading Writers… and my first critique session was like being reborn.

The feedback on my work was so eye opening, from gaps in my grammar to fantasy principles to scene structure, and although there were a lot of problems pointed out, it was all done with kindness and encouragement. It felt like people had just handed me a basket full of gifts and I left with my arms and my heart full.

Once I started getting regular critique, my skills started to seriously improve.

A few years later, I moved from my hometown of Reading to beautiful Yorkshire, and was disappointed when I searched for a similar critique groups to Reading Writers, and couldn’t find one that had the same sort of character and objectives.

So, as is my MO, I set up my own: Leeds Writers and Poets. Some of its members have become my best friends, and I consider the group one of my closest writing tribes.

I kept writing, and I got to a point where I felt like I had written the novel. This was going to be the one. I sent it off to agents, and eagerly awaited their excited responses.

Nothing.

This didn’t make sense to me. I had got one full request for my first submission, and I had only improved since then – surely on this trajectory I should be getting at least a handful of full requests?

But the industry didn’t agree. And what followed were quite a few years of the same story – I’d write another novel, send it out… and get nowhere. (See the end of the article for a table with my actual sub and rejection numbers!)

That’s okay though, I told myself. I’m just not good enough yet – I just need to write a better novel.

Mid-point: Levelling up

Each time I felt I needed to get better, I would double down on how much writing I did, but I would also start to think about what else I could be doing. Was there something I was missing, something I could do to improve my chances?

One thing that I had heard a lot was that you really need to choose the agents you submit to very carefully, and spend a decent amount of time researching them and making sure you’re a good fit.

I have mixed feelings about this.

I suspect this advice exists because there are people out there who will just blanket submit to every agent, even those that don’t represent their genre. This is a massive waste of time for everyone, and those people definitely need to take this advice.

However, assuming you’re a bit more sensible than that – the problem with doing a lot of research into agents, is that you end up building up this person and relationship so much in your dreams, that when they send you a dismissive form rejection, it hurts even more.

And another problem with that, is that you can’t really get a good sense of an agent just from what you can read online – which is sometimes little more than a single paragraph of bio, with frustrating vague ‘details’ such as ‘I love stories that move me’ and ‘I like to be gripped and transported by the prose’, or my favourite ‘I just know what I like when I see it’. Gee, thanks.

However, knowledge is power, so here is what I did to try to get to know the agents who were out there, what they wanted and try to figure out what might be a good fit:

• Read their bios – they should all have a brief bio on the website of their agency. This is the first stop.
• Read their Twitter feed (I’m over forty and I will always call it Twitter. Also, Pluto is a planet). Sometimes all you will find are book promos, but there were a few cases where what they posted showed me that our values aligned (usually if they were raging over feminist injustices) and perhaps more importantly, there were some cases where what they posted showed that our values were NOT aligned, and I should not submit to them.
• Manuscript Wishlist (MSWL) – this is a website which encourages agents to post up-to-date lists of the sort of genres and stories they’re excited about (cozy witchy fantasy or novels set in the Deep South featuring multi-generational female relationships – that sort of thing). I found it a bit difficult to get to grips with, and it’s frustratingly patchy info (not their fault, the organisers are doing a brilliant job, but they are limited by what the agents enter) but if you get a hit – it could be a jackpot.
• QueryTracker – I saved the best till last. If you are querying, then you need to get on QueryTracker; it is quite simply the most outstanding website for keeping track of your submissions and getting an overview of the bigger picture of submissions that are going on all over the world. People share their comments on the agents, and you can see timelines of where your submission sits among the other submissions that have been sent to that agent. Plus, the guy who runs it is extremely helpful and responsive.

Whenever I have queried, I have followed this process:

• Make a longlist of agents which basically consists of every agent who represents my genre in the UK and some from the US.
• Select my favourite 15–30 from this list
• Create a spreadsheet table with the following info:
  • Agent (agent name)
  • Agency (name of their agency)
  • Comments (any previous contact I’ve had with them, or things in their bio, Twitter or MSWL which jumped out at me)
  • Link (direct link to their submissions guidelines)
  • Contact (note of what contact has been made and when)
• Send an initial batch of six
• Send another three out every time a rejection comes in (highlight rejections and full requests in different colours on the spreadsheet)
• Assume it’s a rejection if you haven’t heard back after six weeks and send out more

I know some people say you should send to at least a hundred agents before you give up, but personally I stopped agreeing with that. That certainly has worked for some people and they’ve gone on to have great careers. But I wanted to give myself a better chance of starting my career on the right foot, and therefore, I’d rather keep improving my craft and then land myself an agent I was ecstatic about, rather than keep going until I got any agent.

Anyway, despite doing all this diligent research, I had read quite a few intensely frustrating stories about how writers had met their agents at weddings and got chatting, or had inherited their agent from their successful writer dad – and I found this all intensely demoralising. It sounded like connections were what got you there, and if you didn’t happen to be born with those connections, then the door was firmly closed.

But I did read one story by Jim Butcher, who said that he met his agent at a writing conference, and she had previously rejected him on paper. When he asked her why she rejected him on paper but offered to represent him in person, she simply said that she had ‘met him now’.

Ah, I thought, that’s the key. I need to go to writing conferences and talk to agents face-to-face.²

So I spent an embarrassing few weekends attending writing conferences (any that I could find up North, and the occasional long distance one in London), staring creepily at agents from across the room (and once in the ladies’ toilets – I am so very sorry), obsessing over my agent one-to-ones and being inspired by keynote speeches – special mentions to CL Taylor and Ruth Ware, whose stories I found full of humility and honesty and heart.

Most of my agent one-to-ones resulted in the predictable tearing apart of what I’d written and the inevitable crushing of my hopes.

But then it happened.

I sat down at my one-to-one, resigned to receiving the usual knock backs, but before the agent could start talking, an admin person came up to give him a message. While they had a brief chat, I sat there trying to keep a neutral expression on my face and not leap out of my seat screaming: ‘Don’t you know I’ve only got fifteen precious minutes with this man and you’ve just taken up three of them?!’

While they were talking I also glanced over at his notes and saw that whoever had given him my submission had failed to send him the correct personalised one, and had sent him the one with the name of the other agent I had a one-to-one with. I wanted the earth to swallow me up.

Thankfully, I managed to remain non-insane in appearance, and when they were done with the admin, the agent turned to me, checked his notes and said:

‘This is the best thing I’ve read this year.’

Now – I know what he probably meant it was the best thing he’d read at that year’s iteration of the festival, but I chose to believe that was the best thing he’d read all year full stop. And I’m sticking with it.

He spent the remainder of our time telling me everything he loved about my opening chapters and synopsis, and asked me to send him the full as soon as possible.

I was walking on air. I barely noticed anything else from the conference, because I was sure. This was it. I’d made it.

I spent the next few weeks frantically editing the novel to make it as good as I could, then I sent it off to him.

As you may have predicted, when he got back to me – it wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. That agent spent an hour on the phone to me giving feedback, and although I was very grateful, and the feedback was extremely detailed and practical – it was hard to get past my crushing disappointment.

I had no idea how generous that agent was being with his time with me. I assumed it was normal that if someone read your full manuscript they would then donate an hour of their time, completely free, to giving you assistance on how to make it better. As many others have said, while this industry can be tough, and seem impenetrable at times, it is also filled with kind people who will give you a leg up whenever they can.

I believe you should savour and greatly value those moments, and when you find yourself a few rungs up the ladder, reach down and pull someone up a bit.

Bad guys close in

So, it wasn’t my big break after all.

But I knew what I had to do…

Write a better book. Double down.

So I wrote more. I went on more courses. I attended more conferences. I paid for editorial feedback on my novels. I joined industry groups, such as SCBWI. I had occasionally entered the odd competition over the years, but now I started aggressively entering every one I could find (and I made a list of them all, which you can find here: masterlist of novel writing competitions).³

The strategy worked. Things started happening.

There was one extremely prestigious competition that emailed me to say that even though I hadn’t actually made the longlist, I had reached the top 10% and they wanted me to know, to encourage me to carry on. That meant a lot to me.

Then I started getting longlisted.

Then I started getting shortlisted.

Then I started winning.

In 2022, I was selected as one of twelve winners of the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices Talent Showcase, while I was still on the Bath Children’s Shortlist, waiting to find out who the winner might be…

THIS was it. This was definitely it. I was sure of it.

I’ve cracked writing, I told myself. I’ve done it.

What should I turn my hand to next? Maybe I should try to break into music…

I was so high. People were calling me a ‘hot property’ and my excerpt was going to be read by all the agents in the UK as part of the showcase – they were going to be fighting each other off to sign me.

With all the buzz and a truly impressive list of achievements on my cover letter at this point, I sent my submission off the agents, and waited for the offers to start rolling in.

The replies were lovely – it was thrilling to be getting such effusive personal replies from agents who I had been stalking for so long I practically knew their shoe sizes and what they had for breakfast.

This is a wonderful book, they told me. You are clearly an extremely talented. Someone is going to snap this up.

Then always the same, inevitable ending.

But unfortunately that someone is not me.

Dark moment: Is it worth the heartbreak?

I was once at a social for Leeds Writers and Poets and was talking about being rejected, and someone I was talking to said that he understood about rejection because he had been rejected for some short stories. While I nodded politely, my other writing friend stepped in and said, “That’s not the same as being rejected for a novel at all. Being rejected for a short story is like a pin prick. Being rejected for a novel is like someone stabbing a dagger deep into your gut and then dragging it all the way up to your neck. It’s like being eviscerated.”

That image has stayed with me as apt for the pain of having your novel rejected.

In my experience, the closer you get to success, the more it hurts when it once again, pulls out of your grasp and retreats, cackling, onto an impossibly high ledge.

Once I had received rejections from all the agents on my list, and then a few more, I crashed pretty hard.

It was the first time in my life when I questioned whether I really had what it took to be a traditionally published author.

I spent a lot of time driving along while wailing out Champion by Barnes Courtney:

Maybe if I kept going it would just be like this year after year after year, and I would keep ploughing money and time and emotion into it, and it would never amount to anything.

It was the first time I stopped simply brushing myself off and saying I just needed to write a better novel. I wasn’t sure I had enough in me to double down again.

So I did some serious soul searching. I asked myself the question: If you knew, for sure, with 100% certainty today that you would never get published… would you still write?

I spent several weeks asking myself that question, really trying to find the truth.

And when I reached it?

I knew I would keep writing.

The thought of not writing felt like living the rest of my life in darkness.

I just love it. I love the fizz and spark of a new idea springing into existence in my head. I love walking through the woods letting my imagination play out a scene. I love the feeling of the words flowing out of my fingers, my hands unable to keep up as the ideas and dialogue and descriptions just pour out onto the page. I love making my characters do brave, cool things that I would never have the guts to do. I love the catharsis of being able to voice my rage about injustice in the real world, by transposing it into a fantasy world and then setting it right.

I just love stories and I love writing.

And I would keep doing it, even if I knew I would never see my books on the shelves.

So I started writing the next book.

Final battle: Seizing the keys to the castle

A critical element of writing the book that really was the one, was working with an outstanding editor, Hayley Fairhead, who at the time was working at the Golden Egg Academy, where I was completing their course for children’s writers – and 1:1 feedback from an editor was part of the course.⁴

My work really was almost there, but I believe that without Hayley’s input, it still could have taken me several more years before I managed to crack the magic formula. For that I am eternally grateful to her and to the Golden Egg Academy.

Hayley pointed out that I was trying to write two books in one, which I thought was a good thing, because I was trying to blend two interesting hooks, and more is better, right?

When she suggested I should pick one of the narratives and isolate it, I had a brief meltdown, and she had to talk me down from throwing the whole thing away and starting with a completely different story.

Once I had got over my resistance, and could see that she was right, we got down to the business of finding and nurturing the heart of the story.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the one critical thing I hadn’t figured out how to do yet.

I could write elegant prose, I could craft charismatic characters, I could describe breathtaking locations as if you were there, I could plot a functioning structure where the story hit all the right beats… but I hadn’t quite grasped how to keep a hold of the heart of my story – how to make sure everything adhered to this central throughline.

Once we had torn it all apart and put it back together, and then soothed, and patched and polished until it gleamed – it was time.

Back again, into the trenches.

This time I refused to believe this was The One. Despite the fact that this time I had Golden Egg backing me, believing that I had a good chance. Despite the fact I now had a huge community of writers cheering me on, a raft of competition placements and awards under my belt and several published authors among my friends, who all said I was on the cusp of making it.

I wasn’t going to set myself up for heartbreak. Not again.

Though of course, it would have been physically impossible not to hope.

The thing about having someone with connections helping you with submissions isn’t that it makes an agent more likely to take your book – but it does mean you don’t have to wait around for your rejections. So that’s nice.

I knew who my no. 1 favourite agent was, but I made a tactical decision to not submit to her until I had had at least a few bites. A handful of full requests. Evidence that the sub package was decent so I didn’t blow my chances with it being half baked.

Here’s my cover letter:

Dear Agent First Name,

[Personalisation – ideally I have encountered them in some way before, otherwise just say something nice, and related to their bio and what they like.]

When She Bleeds, The Kingdom Falls.

At five years old, Nisha was selected to be the Living Goddess – a vessel for the great Goddess Shantavi: worshipped by day, subjected to horrific rituals by night… and never allowed to bleed. But on her twelfth birthday Nisha fled, before the Immortal King could sacrifice her in a final act of duty to the Kingdom. She has lived on the streets in hiding ever since. Until now, when little Ratna – the only family she has left – is chosen to be the next Living Goddess. Nisha will not let that happen. Even if she has to overcome her fears and find the strength of a Goddess, hidden deep inside her.

Blood of Gods and Girls is a fiery feminist fantasy set in a Singapore-inspired melting pot of Eastern culture. It features a Golden Eagle warrior, a hunky holy man, and sweeping landscapes of snowy mountain ranges and cities set into canyon walls.

I wrote this novel for any girl who feels ignored when she should be seen. Side-lined when she should be chosen. To help her realise she has the strength inside her to fight for a world that treats her with fairness and respect. It’s also for anyone who thinks it would be cool to ride on a giant flying lioness. I believe it will appeal to fans of The Gilded Ones, Children of Blood and Bone and Girls of Paper and Fire.

I am half Singaporean and half German, and I live in Yorkshire. I am the creator of The Novel Factory software for writers, through which I have a mailing list of 60k writers, many of whom have been following the highlights of my writing journey.

In 2023, Blood of Gods and Girls was longlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award and the WriteMentor Novel Award. An earlier version was runner-up in the WriteMentor Novel in Develpment Award 2021. My other works have been shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award, selected for the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices Anthology 2022, longlisted for the Guppy Prize, and reached the top 10% of the Bridport Prize.

Sincerely,

Katja Kaine

The first two agents who got exclusive first access to the novel both politely declined it.

It got sent to two more, who also declined it.

I definitely wasn’t starting to get jittery and have ‘here we go again feelings’.

But then we sent out to a handful more and – a full request. And then another. And then suddenly we had fulls out all over the place.

And then, while I was at the Northern Writers Awards Ceremony for a Northern Promise Award I’d been selected for, I was sitting in a café with my fellow winners, lamenting my failure to actually secure an agent, when I took my phone out to check something in an email and practically jumped out of my seat, shouting the ever original, “Oh my god!”

That somewhat interrupted the conversation, but I was met with cheers and hugs from these almost complete strangers when I told them I had just got an offer of representation.

It was a very cool place to get my first offer, because I then went on to eat a fancy meal at a swanky do, and collect my award from the stage.

Apt.

I knew it was time to send the manuscript to my favourite agent, which I did, then had the longest week of my entire life, where I could barely think, because all my head could do was replay two scenarios of receiving an email from her – one which said she absolutely loved it and wanted to represent me, and the other where she said it was a great book, but it wasn’t for her.

Finally, when I was ready to explode from the nerves – she replied.

She loved it.

By that point I had had offers from five agents, and another had asked for a Zoom call meeting from me – but my dream agent had offered. I was walking on air.

Even though she had been my first choice agent from the beginning of querying (I had a spreadsheet with a table listing my top choice agents, their agencies and any key notes and she was at the top highlighted in yellow – no lie) I did feel I had to give the decision serious thought.

Just because I’d built up a perfect relationship with her in my head, that didn’t mean she would actually be the right person in real life.

But… she was.

On our first Zoom call we clicked. She got my book, and we laughed together and ranted about feminism, and I knew she was the one.⁵

I was so desperate to sign the contract so she couldn’t change her mind, I printed it out, signed it, scanned it and emailed it back, only to be gently told that I had to sign it digitally, and what she’d sent over was just for me to check the details and make sure I was happy.

I play it much cooler these days.

No, really.

Working with Maddy has been an absolute dream. She responds to my messages with lightning speed, is warm, incisive, funny, and has – as she said she would – really made my novel shine.

Epilogue: Sealing the deal

I know it seems a bit crazy to have getting a major book deal as an epilogue, but after all the decade-plus grind and graft and heartbreak and countless rejections, after I signed with Maddy, the rest happened so fast it’s almost a blur.

It took me about thirteen years to get an agent. But after that, it took me less than a year to get the book deal of a lifetime.

After signing, Maddy worked with me on several developmental edits of my book – drawing out certain themes and filling in detail where things felt a bit sparse. She also pointed out a few problem areas and suggested where some scenes could be made to pop more.

After what I’d heard from friends who were further along in the process than me, I expected this to be a very long process, but actually it didn’t feel that bad. Maybe it was because I’d already redrafted that novel about a million times. Maybe it’s just because I enjoy editing and love getting external feedback. Who knows.

So, I was very surprised when Maddy said she thought we should go out on sub to publishers sooner rather than later – as there were a couple of windows, and if we missed this one we’d have to wait quite a while.

Great! I said, and let her know I’d like to have some regular updates, but definitely did not need to be pinged every time someone said no.

I had been on sub for about a week, and a friend had called to say she was Swiftcurious, and did I want to go and see the Eras Tour movie at the local cinema with her. I also felt it might be useful to know more about this cultural sensation I was clueless about, so agreed.

When I got back from the show, quite late and slightly tipsy, I had a message from Maddy, asking me to call her as soon as possible. As it was quite late, I thought it more polite to text, and when I didn’t get a reply, I assumed she had gone to bed.

The next morning, I woke up feeling a bit fuzzy and hungover, and thought I would sort myself out and have a shower before I called her back. After all, how urgent could it be?

When I got out of the shower I had several missed calls from Maddy, and a couple of texts, again, asking me to call AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

So, with my wet hair still in a towel, I went up to my writing attic and called her right away.

“It’s good news,” she said. “Several of the publishers are taking it to acquisitions, and we’ve had a pre-empt.”

Taking it to acquisitions means that a publisher would like to make an offer and are just making final arrangements and deciding how much. A pre-empt is where one publisher makes you and offer they hope you can’t refuse, but they put a very brief deadline on you accepting it. The purpose of this is if they think there will be multiple offers and it will go to auction, and they want to ‘pre-empt’ that, by snatching you off the table before anyone else gets a chance.

Maddy said that the publisher wanted an answer within the next few hours.

Then she told me the amount.

I wrote it down and stared at it for a while, thinking that must be a mistake. I must have put too many zeros.

Then I realised Maddy was still talking to me, and I hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

After a little more nail-biting back and forth, Maddy and I agreed to accept – and entered my new home at Penguin Random House.

I went to the park with my partner and kids, and wandered around in the sunshine in an absolute daze, feeling like I was floating through a dream. That feeling endured for months, and I still have plenty of moments now where I think what’s happened can’t possibly be true.

But they keep telling me it is.

There are some writers who are much ‘luckier’ than me, and get agents and book deals after only a few years (I always find it slightly painful when I see tweets saying ‘After a whole six years I’ve finally got an agent!), but I am glad I didn’t get lucky in that way.

I’m glad it didn’t happen until I had really worked at my craft for such a long time, that I’m pretty sure I understand what I’m doing. If I’d got ‘lucky’ too early, then so much more would have been down to chance, and I would have known so much less, the chance of me making mistakes would have been very high.

Obviously it’s easy to say now in hindsight, and if you had asked me at any earlier stage, I would have been muttering darkly under my breath at the suggestion that I would be glad it took so long.

But I am.

All my luck came at the end, in a great early editor, an outstanding agent at a world class agency, and a stunning editor at one of the greatest publishing houses in the world who got my book and believed in it.

I can’t wait for the next stage.

My tops tips for getting an agent (i.e. a TLDR of my writing journey, as bullet points)

• Commit to getting published
• Write your first novel
• Learn your craft
• Work on your process
• Write a better novel
• Start getting rejections
• Find your writing community
• Keep improving your writing
• Get more rejections
• Get feedback from other writers
• Obsess over the stories of successful writers
• Rail at the unfairness of it all
• Keep writing better stories
• Attend writing conferences and courses
• Enter competitions and don’t get anywhere
• Start getting some positive signs
• Get professional feedback if you can afford it (or find kindly people who will do it for free)
• Get more rejections
• Start getting somewhere in competitions
• Keep improving your writing
• Keep submitting
• Nearly drown in rejections
• Remind yourself why you started writing in the first place
• Keep writing, keep improving, keep putting yourself out there until you finally…
• Make it

Delicious stats to obsess over

When I was in the query trenches I was hungry for data and never could find as much as I wanted, so I thought I’d share mine with you, to give you what I wanted at the time.

I was particularly interested in how many novels people had written before they got their breakthrough novel.

So, this is a summary of all the novels I have written, plus info about queries and full requests.

Caveats are that some of these were just very rough first drafts, and some of them were more like novellas than novels. Second caveat is that this data is not 100% accurate, it’s my best guess from what I can glean from trawling back through emails using Outlook’s rather frustratingly ineffective search function – and also bearing in mind that several novels went through various iterations and sometimes I changed the title halfway through querying, making it even harder to keep track of.

With all that said, this is a fairly representative data table of my writing journey:

Footnotes

¹Notably Chloe Going (https://thechloegong.com/2019/07/19/how-i-got-my-agent-book-deal/) who is deeply annoying for being so successful at such a young age, while also being funny and thoughtful and kind. Warning – reading about over-achievers like Chloe is not necessarily encouraging! For balance and a more realistic view of the process, make sure you read this one, by Jo Wu, too (How I got my Agent articles are also available from non-Asian authors, too – if you’re into that sort of thing).

²I have very mixed feeling about that fact that while I didn’t get my agent this way, attending conferences and creating networks with the people you meet there really does improve your chances. I’m painfully aware that there are a lot of people who simply don’t have the resources to attend conferences. Your funds, day to day commitments and even where you live have a massive impact on whether you can go or not. It feels like another nail in the coffin that makes writing an uneven playing field.

If you run an event that is willing to offer sponsored places for those on low incomes, please get in touch with me, as I’d be interested in funding some of these where possible.

³All of these are more cost barriers – editorial feedback can cost between £300 and £1000 and the average quality competition costs £20–£30 to enter.

If you know of any free or subsidised professional editorial or feedback services, then please let me know and I will share them with our networks.

If your competition offers complimentary entries for people on low incomes – let me know and I will highlight your competition on our very popular competition listings page.

My company also sponsors free places where the competitions are able to take care of the admin side of things – please get in touch if you run a competition and would like to take advantage of this.

⁴Golden Egg do offer sponsored and subsidised spaces on their courses, and we sometimes fund these. Contact us or them for more info!

⁵Full disclosure – I did have a little wobble when I found myself very taken with one of the other agents (a very well established and successful one) and she picked out a few elements of the novel that showed she really understood it, and offered some excellent suggestions. But in the end I chose to go with my original choice, even though she was newer. Well actually, partially because she was newer. Because I felt that I would be more of a priority for her, whereas the more established agent would have other high profile clients and I might find myself talking to her assistant, rather than her. I do believe she would also have been a great agent, and having to choose between them was one of the most excruciating decisions of my life.