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rosieethor · 1 year

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Hi there! I had a quick question for you. You used to have a free post on Patreon that had a bunch of tips for researching agents to query, and I've had it bookmarked for a while, but I can't access it anymore because your Patreon stuff is all down currently. I was wondering if you happen to have that article up anywhere else? I'm about to search for agents for querying round 2: electric boogaloo and I was hoping to refresh myself before diving in. If you don't have it up anywhere, no worries, and thanks for writing it in the first place!

Hello! Happy to repost it here! I took down my Patreon, as it was causing me too much stress to create enough quality content to feel as though I could justify charging folks. Anyway, without further ado, my general overview of how to research and evaluate literary agents when you're in the query trenches: ~~

Lately I’ve been working with some of my mentees to build their query lists. It’s an exhausting process with a lot of research and guess work. In light of some recent discussions and advice floating around to “research” agents, I thought I’d throw together a sort of haphazard guide on how I do that and what I look for. “Research” is pretty nebulous advice and it’s just… not very helpful without any kind of caveat that no matter how much research you do, you’ll never be 100% sure about an agent until they reveal themselves to be a schmagent (shady agent). It’s sort of… Schrodinger’s schmagent, if you will.

This isn’t going to be an exhaustive how-to, but it’s a starting point. I hope it helps you as you figure out who you want to query and who you’re willing to trust with your career.

Depending on what type of book you’re writing, there are many tools the industry has to offer that you can use to figure out if agents are legit, what they are interested in signing, and what books they’ve sold.

MSWL

Manuscript Wish List is an incredible resource. Agents can upload their wishlists to a profile on the website so you can see up to date information about not only what age categories and genres they’re accepting, but what other sorts of things they’re most interested in seeing like themes and writing styles and ship dynamics etc. This is a great place to start with building your query list and can help you narrow down who would be the best fit for you.

But… it doesn’t filter out schmagents. You don’t have to pass any sort of test in order to make a profile on MSWL except… be… an agent. Of any caliber. There are lots of agents on MSWL that I would never suggest someone query. On the flip side, there are lots of agents who are not on MSWL who I would suggest someone query.

Querytracker

This is another great tool the industry has to offer. I didn’t use it for myself, but have used it to help others with building their query lists. The gist of it is that you can log all your queries and see when other people submitted and got their responses to see where you are in the queue. You can also see examples of form rejections from certain agents to see if yours was a form of personalized, and there’s a list of pretty much all the agents in existence.

However, this list of agents is not vetted in any way. There’s no quality control of the list, so again it’s just a starting point. There is a tool on the site called “Who reps Whom” where you can see an non-exhaustive list of authors and which agent reps them. This list is sometimes out of date though since authors leave agents sometimes and don’t announce their new representation until their book sells. It also sometimes lists multiple agents for an author when that author has sold different books repped by different agents. It can sometimes help you see which agents are losing clients, but it doesn’t really tell you why and that’s the important detail that will help you see if an agent is bad-bad or just bad for that author.

There is a paid version of QT, which I’ve never used, but I’ve heard it’s a great tool to have while you’re querying, but maybe not before you’re querying.

Children’s Bookshelf

If you’re a kidlit writer of any age category, you should be subscribed to Publisher’s Weekly Children’s Bookshelf newsletter. It’s a biweekly (Tuesdays and Thursdays) newsletter that includes a deal report. This lists all the book deals from picture book up through YA that are being announced that week.

First of all, you should get on this whether or not you’re ready to start querying. It’s a great, free resource that will help you stay aware of what’s selling in the industry. Keep in mind, though, that books being announced now won’t come out for at least a year or two. They also probably sold months ago. What’s selling now won’t be what’s selling in a few months, necessarily, so be wary of chasing trends.

Mostly, though, this is a great way for you to see who is selling what to whom. See a book deal that sounds cool? Check who the agent was. Then check who it was sold to. Is that a publisher you’d like to publish with? Maybe check out that agent’s wishlist to see if you’re a match!

Old editions of Children’s Bookshelf and the deal reports are available online, too, so if you want to do a bunch of research right now, you can search for those on PW’s website.

Publisher’s Marketplace

I hate this website very very much mostly because they charge so much money for you to get access to what should be free information HOWEVER it’s a very useful tool with lots of internal connectivity and links that are actually helpful. If you’re willing to shell out the money, you can check up on agents’ sales and see how their sales are.

A word of caution: PM has some “top dealmakers” lists you can peruse. These are misleading and simply list agents who are making the most deals. There’s no vetting of the quality of these deals. There is a well known schmagent who often tops these lists, so just because someone appears on a list, don’t take that as gospel that they are a quality agent.

Avoiding Schmagents

There are a lot of schmagents out there and really they fall into two categories: Bad agents who are out to screw you over and bad agents who don’t realize they are bad agents.

The former are usually a little easier to spot. I say usually because… not always. Sometimes very successful agents turn out to suck at their jobs. *stares at the current situation* But! You can sometimes spot these agents because there will be articles or blog posts about how much they suck. There will be podcasts where the hosts have to call the agent by a rhyming fake name to avoid a lawsuit. Etc.

The latter are a little harder to spot sometimes because they talk a good game. They sometimes talk about bad agent practices and share their own processes in the name of transparency (lots of good agents to this too!) These agents have the best of intentions and really want to be good agents, but they might have bad training or not enough strong connections in the industry to actually sell your book. They might not know enough about contracts to negotiate a good one, or they might not actually know what is and isn’t industry standard. They think because they are well-intentioned and not out to scam you that they’re not a schmagent.

Basically, the first case is like hiring a con artist to do your plumbing and they come over to fix your sink and break your toilet in the process. The second case is like hiring your really enthusiastic neighbor to fix your sink. They might be excited to do the job, but if they have the wrong tools and the wrong training, a lot can still go wrong.

So how do you know who to avoid?

Google

Okay I know this is going to sound extremely ridiculous but just. Just. Google. Google the agent’s name or the agency and scroll through the first couple of pages of results. If there are public facing horror stories to be had, you’ll probably find them here. Sometimes I see people sign with schmagents and I know if you google their name the second or third result is a detailed and horrifying blog post from an ex client all about her “year with a terrible agent.” A simple google search of the agency’s name would reveal this information, and it hurts my heart to see people signing when there are so many obvious red flags for them to find if they just search.

Writer Beware

This is a great website with detailed accounts of many known schmagents and Schmagencies. It’s not exhaustive by any means, but you’ll see some great info here about bad actors in the publishing industry, what they’ve done, and why it’s recommended that you stay away.

Red Flags

There are also just a few red flags to look out for. Things like agents charging you up front—never ever pay an agent. Agents get paid a commission off of what they sell for you. They only get paid if you get paid. Money will flow from the publisher to the agent (who will take their 15%) and then to you.

Keep an eye out for agencies that charge a reading fee for queries. Again, don’t pay them money. Be wary of any agency that also provides paid editorial services. The same goes for if an agent tells you to work with a paid freelance editor in order to get signed. (This is different from feedback suggesting you work with critique partners or an editor. That’s a good suggestion. Prescribing that you work with a specific editor and pay them for their services as the conditions to get signed as a client is not okay.)

I am also very wary of any agent or agency that requires exclusivity on queries, partials, or full manuscripts. Exclusivity, to me, reads as though the agent doesn’t believe they stand a chance against other agents if they decide they want to sign you and… that’s a red flag to me. If they don’t think they can measure up, then they probably can’t and you shouldn’t be giving them a chance. (I’ll note that this is different from exclusivity on an R&R, which I think can sometimes be warranted in cases when an agent takes a lot of time to give you notes. Sometimes an agent will give revision notes and ask for exclusive right to consider the revised—be sure to nail down a timeframe for this so you don’t get stuck waiting for them to read for 6 months. Give them a head start of a few weeks or a month, but don’t give them forever to consider.)

Evaluating

When I evaluate an agent for a query list, I look at their sales.

If they have sales, I look to see if they are sales to publishers/editors you would be interested in working with? Likely, their sales are indicative of who they have relationships with. If you are submitting with the hopes of a traditional print deal to a large publisher, but the agent mostly does digital only deals to small presses, that’s probably not going to be the right fit for you. If you’re a middle grade writer but the agent has only ever sold adult historical romance, then… again, maybe not the right fit.

If they don’t have sales, I look at the other agents at the agency. Who has been agenting longer at the agency who might be mentoring them? Look at their sales and evaluate those. It’s possible the new agent you’re querying will make different contacts, but they’re likely being trained by the higher ups at the agency. Make sure you’re comfortable with that.

Check where the agent was trained too. Probably, you’ll see this in their agent bio. You’ll see some former workplaces—do they have prior experience in the industry? At a publisher maybe? A strong internship at another agency? This isn’t necessarily always going to be the sign of a good agent, but it can tell you what their history is and who might have had a hand in training them.

Other things I look at are their client list. Does the agent have a ton of clients already? Do they have a lot of high profile clients? These aren’t necessarily marks against them, but it might be an indicator that their plate is already pretty full. They might not be taking on a lot of new clients—or if they are, they might be overloading themselves and setting you up for very long wait times or even being neglected as a newer client. That’s definitely not always the case, and there are plenty of agents with huge lists full of very successful authors that juggle it all quite well.

This is where the last piece of the puzzle comes in and I realize I’m about to sound just extremely annoying but… do a vibe check. You don’t have to have a concrete reason not to query someone. If you feel at all uncomfortable or you get a weird vibe from someone, it’s okay to just say “Maybe I’ll skip that person.” I skipped an agent who was probably lovely, but gave of a kind of weird ra-ra feminist terf vibe to me that made me feel like maybe that wouldn’t be a safe relationship for me. I also skipped a male agent who I saw tweeting at women in a way that just felt a little uncomfy to me. That agent was later revealed to be a total creep, so… my vibe check war right on point there. Just… sometimes it’s worth taking a risk on a newer agent (it certainlywas for me) but it’s not always worth taking a risk on an agent who just feels off to you. Especially if you’re a marginalized person and you get a vibe from an agent that might indicate they’d try to exploit your identity or just be kind of shitty to you… you’re not obligated to query them! Even if they request in a pitch contest! Even if they slide right into your DMs to ask for your book (especially if they do this omfg this is so inappropriate). Basically… listen to your gut.

Okay so… what am I actually looking for?

There’s not one perfect checklist to use for this that’s a surefire way to weed out the baddies and keep the goodies. Unfortunately, a huge part of this industry is figuring out what works for you and being willing to communicate that. You won’t know what you’re looking for until you find it sometimes. If you’d asked me who my dream agent was before I queried, I would have given you the name of an agent I would never ever ever query if I had to go into the trenches now. Sometimes what you think you want and what you actually need are two very different things, and I’m really lucky that I got what I needed without trying to.

It’s helpful if you keep in mind some stuff about what youwant like:

· Do you want an editorial agent, or do you want to manage the editorial side yourself with CPs etc. and just have your agent sell your work?

· Do you want an agent who specializes in your age category/genre or do you want an agent with broader contacts in case you decide to branch out?

· Do you want a large agency that manages a lot of clients and may have a really strong internal subrights department? Or do you want a more boutique agency where you might be in a smaller pool of authors?

· Do you want to publish traditionally with a large publisher, or are you interested in submitting to some digital imprints or independent publishers?

Keep all this in mind as you do your research on agents. I recommend that you reevaluate these wants as you go along to see if that’s still what you want or if your career plans have changed. But, use these as a way to steer you with your search. Don’t submit to an agent just because their wishlist matches up with your book. Make sure their agenting style matches up with your career plan too.

Dream Agents

Lastly, a plea from me to you: don’t have a dream agent. It’s okay to have like… an idea of what kind of agent you want and the relationship you hope you’ll have but… don’t pick a real agent to have as your dream agent. Nine times out of ten what you’re going to end up wanting in an agent isn’t what you think you want now while you’re in the query trenches, but also it’s weird and maybe a little bit unhealthy to idolize an industry professional who may or may not be doing their job well. Just because you like an agent’s twitter presence doesn’t mean they would be the right agent for you. There are a lot of agents out there who do a great job, so it’ll be better for you in the long run to have a dream type of agent rather than an actual specific dream agent. Keep your options open and dream broadly.

Whisper Networks

There’s a lot of talk about whisper networks in publishing and… basically yeah. These exist. They spread a lot of good information. They also spread a lot of bad information. Basically these are avenues for gossip, so take it all with a grain of salt. I’ve heard things before from the source and then heard a very twisted and garbled version of that story again a few days later from someone else. It’s like a big game of telephone and everyone’s tryingto pass along the right info, but stuff gets twisted along the way. Be cognizant of who your source is and who their source is etc.

Not everyone has access to whisper networks and… unfortunately that’s kind of just by design. The reason we have whisper networks instead of a detailed database is because these conversations can quickly turn into big spectacles that end with a cease-and-desist order and threats of lawsuits. Agents hold a lot of power in this industry—especially the ones with daddy’s money to throw around—and none of us wants to deal with that, especially since we don’t get paid nearly enough to actually fight it. We also don’t want to burn bridges. Maybe there’s a shitty agent out and about, but they rep some authors we really respect or they work at a great agency that we might someday want to query. Until the power imbalance in publishing is more even, it will continue to be dangerous for authors to talk publicly about bad agent behavior—even when it is very clearly unethical.

I don’t have the solution here. Maybe there just… isn’t one… Maybe someone a lot smarter than me will come up with one. Maybe we’ll all just keep circling on this issue for decades to come. At the end of the day, my best advice is to talk to other authors. If you’re having a weird experience, talk to someone else. The best thing we can do is compare notes to see if what we’re dealing with is normal.

In Closing

So… I hope this is useful in one way or another. It’s definitely not a catch all and it’s not a perfect system. These are just the tools I know of and the way I think about agents/agencies when putting together query lists with my mentees. A lot of it is guess work. I think the industry would hugely benefit from more regulation and standardization but… that is another conversation for another time because we’ve crossed over 3000 words on this post and it’s time for bed.

With that… good luck!

#querying #literary agent #publishing #publishing industry #writing advice #querying is hell and i am so sorry

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jpitha · 1 year

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Me: “I wrote a book! Maybe I can get it published!”

*reads QueryTracker for agents and other author experiences*

*reads average time to reply from an agent with a form letter rejection*

*reads what agents are looking for to sell*

*realize I didn’t write any of that*

Me: “oh no. Ohhhh no no no. Oh no.”

#writing #publishing #literary agent #this is going to be harder than I thought #I mean intellectually I knew it would be hard #but just realizing how hard it will be #maybe I’ll just stick to Tumblr.

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hayatheauthor · 8 months

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I had a dream yesterday night that I got two full requests and was really happy, woke up today and thought nothing of it then came back from school, checked my email, and guess what I saw- a full request!

I was honestly really bummed out about starting another round of queries at the end of August because in the previous round I got 3 fulls that ultimately ended in rejections. Even now I'm scared to post this because what if this full ends up as a rejection too?

But tbh any progress is still progress, and I'm trying my best to look at this whole thing positively. How is everyone else's writing/publishing coming along?

#haya: talks #haya: talks the traitor's throne #querying is a very inconsistent process you really can't predict what comes next #i've gotten a full request within 20 minutes of sending in a query and i've also gotten full requests 4 months later #i've had people say they love my book but can't offer rep because it's not fit for their current list while others think it's the right fit #it really all just depends on the agent's current mindset and work goals #and as annoying as that can be you can't hold it against them #but honestly i can't deny it feels good getting this request kind of like a confirmation that I'm going down the right track #querying agents #literary agent #querying process #traditional publishing

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ebookporn · 1 month

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Jeremy Nguyen

#book publishing #literary agent #editors #writers life

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thealmostfamouswriter · 1 month

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Is Getting A Literary Agent Risky?

You’ve completed your manuscript and you want to publish your book but you don’t know the process. Research is resourceful but it’s not effective if you don’t know what to look for.

There is a plethora of publishing houses to contact and seeing that makes your mind spin. You’ll also see links to literary agents with click baits “we’ll make your book a best seller guaranteed.” You click and you’re engulfed with promises and reviews that you can’t substantiate are legit. The urge to hire an agent is strong because your gut screams that in your hands you hold a book you believe will be a best seller. First time authors tend to see the positive hype of agents promising to make you a best-selling author, but before you decide to hire an agent, you must research further his or her resume to know if they can do what is promised.

Not everything you read is legit. Independent agents are not always truthful with their professional resume. Their website maybe designed sharply with photos of popular books, authors, and testimonies to validate the agent’s expertise. Looks too good to be true, right?

The Association of Literary Agents is a good source to reference for legit agents. They provide names and bios of recommended agents for you to contact if you decide to go that route. Another resource is the Seymour Agency to find an agent that is suitable for your publishing needs. But for independent agents, you can go onto the author’s website to legitimize the agent; also, social media will have authors to advise agents if they used one. Not all independent agents are scammers, but unfortunately, the bad ones make it harder for good agents to obtain work.

Keep in mind that agents will require a contract to hire them. Some require payment upfront and they will all take a percentage of your royalties. All will request to read your manuscript before they decide to work for you, some may even advise you to make changes to make your story impactful to an audience in the genre you’ve written. But if one should ask you to send them your original manuscript, don’t do it. Send them a watermarked copy. There are many horror stories about agents that deceive new authors by taking payments, taking manuscripts and disappearing for an extended period of time - forever. It’s a blow to the gut when you realize that you’ve been duped and your manuscript is forever lost. (Please, always have copies of your story and never, I mean never, send an original.)

If you can afford to hire a literary agent, by all means, do it. If finances have you strapped, know there are more cost effective ways to get your book read, but you just need to apply effort to market yourself. Though the process maybe stressful, it’s a learning experience altogether that helps you grow as an author.

Until next time… happy writing.

Photos: *Raindance Film Festival

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danielscarcello · 2 months

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Field of Lucid Dreams

Because I had a hard time getting my novel picked up, I decided to publish my short stories — my collection of coincidences — as a blog, hoping I would gain some traction that way. And before I even wrote a single post, a series of events proved this was the right choice.

At the library where I work, a book came across my desk, called Proof of Heaven, which was about a neurosurgeon who has a near-death experience and describes his vision of the afterlife. It was inside a box full of donated books. I stacked the donations on a cart to shelve them when Sarah, one of my colleagues, stopped me.

“Got one more for you,” she said. She handed me a picture book called Holly, which had a black cat on the cover.

As I filed away the books, I picked up Proof of Heaven and flipped through it. I found a withered prayer card tucked in the book, on page 24; someone must have used as it as a bookmark and forgot about it. I opened the card with one hand, while holding the book open with the other, and one word on the page, from this passage, happened to catch my eye.

Then, out of nowhere, I shouted three words. They were crystal clear, and heard by all the doctors and nurses present, as well as by Holley, who stood a few paces away, just on the other side of the curtain.

“God, help me!”

Holley.

Sarah had just handed me a book called — Holly. I put down Proof of Heaven and picked up Holly, and the first sentence said that last November, we lost our 14-year-old cat named Holly.

That was when Marianne came to mind. Marianne’s birthday was on November 14th. Her father died last year, after a long, grueling illness.

Instead of putting Proof of Heaven on the shelf, I kept it aside for her.

She texted me a few days later: “So I guess I have to read that book now. Last night, this lady at work mentioned that baseball movie, Field of Dreams. Later, I watched this YouTube video, and it mentioned Field of Dreams too. The crazy thing is that the video was about near-death experiences — just like the book.”

“Holy shit!” I wrote.

When I thought about Field of Dreams, I remembered this strange this little episode that took place the night before.

“Here’s another baseball coincidence for you,” I wrote. “Last night I was at Pita Land getting shawarma. I was standing in line, watching TV, and a headline flashed across the screen: ‘Jays sign new infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa’. But I caught it so quickly that I could have sworn it said infidel, not infielder. I stood by the TV, waiting for the headline to loop back around, so I could see what it actually said. And his name sounded just like what was on the menu — Falafel.”

She sent me a laughing emoji.

“It’s interesting,” she went on. “I never get any signs from my dad, and I want one so badly.”

A few days later, it was New Year’s Eve, and I spent the night at Robb’s place. At one point, he put on the new Dave Chappelle Netflix special: The Dreamer.

Thinking about Field of Dreams, I listened to his monologue, my eyes fixed on the screen.

In your life, at any given moment, the strongest dream in that moment wins that moment. I am a very powerful dreamer. I dreamed tonight as a fourteen-year-old boy, and I’m living it as a fifty-year-old man…

This gave me such a renewed sense of determination to publish my collection of coincidences online. Even if no publisher in the world wanted my book, I would still chase my dream.

And so, the next day, I set out to write my first blog post. I closed my eyes and waited for an idea to come to me. My thoughts went back to Pita Land, and I remembered how on that morning, at work, a bunch of us were talking about obscure horror movies; someone had brought up a documentary about the Donner Party, the group of American pioneers who were trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains and resorted to cannibalism to survive. Now, just before I saw the headline about Kiner-Falefa, I noticed — for the first time in all the years I’d been eating shawarma — one particular item on the menu: Beef Doner.

With a shudder, I started jotting all this down, wondering how I would string this together into a something worth reading. At first, I couldn’t figure it out, and so I took a break. With obscure horror movies on my mind, I started scrolling through YouTube, looking for something to watch. Then I found a channel called Renegade Films.

At random, I clicked a video called “Who Let Him Make This Movie?”. The movie, which I knew nothing about, was Babylon. As it turned out, much to my delight, Babylon was directed by Damien Chazelle — whose name echoed Dave Chappelle.

When it was over, another video on the channel, right next to the one about Babylon, caught my attention: “The Perfectly Logical Reason This Director Ate His Shoe (inspiring)”.

The director was Werner Herzog. It was about the time Herzog promised Errol Morris he would eat his shoe if he finished a movie about pet cemeteries he was working on. And, as I later read on Wikipedia, “In 1978, when the film Gates of Heaven premiered, Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe.”

Pet Cemeteries. Holly. The lost cat. Proof of Heaven. Gates of Heaven.

In other words, the perfectly logical reason this director ate his shoe was so that it would serve as a call to fearlessly chase your dreams. He said:

If I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams, and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life, or I end my life with this project. All these dreams are yours as well… we have to articulate ourselves otherwise we would be cows in the field.

Field of Dreams.

My head was spinning. Finally, I read the Wikipedia page on Field of Dreams. And the first paragraph absolutely blew me away. Field of Dreams was based on a novel by W.P Kinsella called — Shoeless Joe.

The Perfectly Logical Reason This Director Ate His Shoe.

Frantically, I kept clicking all the links on Wikipedia, writing down all the connections I found — including the fact W.P Kinsella wrote a book called Butterfly Winter, Proof of Heaven had a blue butterfly on its cover, and Werner Herzog directed a movie called Fitzcarraldo, about a man determined to transport a steamship over a hill in the Amazon basin in order to build an opera house.

Field of Dreams gave us the phrase, “If you build it, they will come.”

If you build your website…

– they will come.

Finally, I jumped back to the Wikipedia page for Field of Dreams. In the movie, Ray, who was unable to reconcile with his father before he died, hears the ghost of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson tell him to build a baseball diamond in a cornfield. If you build it, they will come. Throughout the film, Ray sees the ghost of “Shoeless Joe” and other dead baseball players. Then, during a game, when the catcher removes his mask, Ray recognizes him as his father as a young man.

I stopped reading at that point, and I thought about something Dave Chappelle said:

You have to be wise enough to know when you’re living in your dream, and you have to be humble enough to accept when you’re in someone else’s…

All this time, I thought the coincidences were all about my writing, my blog — my dreams. But then I remembered what Marianne said about her father. And I knew I had to be humble enough to accept this wasn’t for me. It was for her.

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aritany · 3 months

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Hi, Alex! I appreciate the insights you share into your writing/publishing journey. Not sure if you've talked about this or not, but did you end up with an agent, or did you submit right to a publishing house? It seems like everyone says scoring an agent is the way to go, so I was curious what your experience was. Thank you!

i do have an agent, yes! i'm signed to ali herring at spencerhill associates. my experience getting an agent was very unusual and very, very lucky, so i tend to say i'm not the best person to ask about the querying process.

(i signed with her within 3 weeks of sending my first query, because she happened to look at the newest chunk of her submissions that day when she usually starts with the old stuff, and then she sent a full request the day after i queried her, finished within 24 hours, offered another 24 hours later... it was nuts. the extra two weeks were to let the other agents i queried decide. do not let this fool you into thinking this is what querying is like. it is not, and it's gotten a lot tougher since 2020.)

as a rule, if you want to be traditionally published, you have to be agented. most (and all major) publishing houses won't accept unsolicited manuscripts, so your best bet is to go through the querying trenches.

#asks #publishing #literary agent #querying

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literallycait · 8 months

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Opening to Queries

I reopen to queries tomorrow! I'll be open for one week to start, then will reopen again when I've responded to all queries in that first batch. I've updated my submission guidelines page so be sure to read through in advance if you'd like to query. Looking forward to seeing everyone's work!

#literary agent #publishing #querying #query status #submission guidelines #books

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jeremyfuscaldo · 1 year

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I officially have an agent!

#Agent #Representation #literary agent #Announcement

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huntedhealer · 6 months

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Daddy’s girl

TW: daddy issues

Dad,

I love you, but I can't have hateful people in my world. You and I have never seen eye to eye, and I have tried all my life to be tolerant of your beliefs and even to understand them, but I don't feel as though you've ever considered where I am coming from. You act like being a peaceful person makes me weak. You deny that you have ever caused me harm. You have done nothing but reject me since the day I was born and yet I'm meant to keep making efforts to include you in my life? Take a minute and consider why I might not want to do that. Really think about it. I'm tired of being the unwanted child.

I have so many people that genuinely light up whenever I walk into a room; and you should have been first in that line.

You never wanted a daughter.

You never wanted me.

Why does it suddenly matter to you that we speak? You never showed up for me. Not once. Every over-achieving task I burdened myself with in high school was to prove to you that I'm a good child, a good person, that I was good enough. And I was always those things, it was you that convinced me otherwise. I would love to have you in my life. I would love to see you love my children. I have been a mother for 14 and a half years. You saw my son once at the hospital. You've never even met my beautiful daughter. I don't think you realize just how much you lost when you decided not to love me.

I'm an incredible person. I love everyone so hard that sometimes it is to my own detriment. I have sought your approval since I learned to walk. You never gave it to me. I don't need it anymore. I'm approving myself. I am who I am in spite of you. I love where you hate. I heal what you harmed. You can spend the rest of your life trying to convince yourself that I'm the asshole, but I remember everything. I remember dancing on your feet but I also remember reaching for your hand and you literally shaking your arm to get me off of you like some kind of vermin. You never knew how to love me, and I don't even think that's your fault, but it is your responsibility to heal your wounds and learn how to love in ways that don't hurt. You have no idea how many times a day my mind plays the soundtrack of my childhood. "You're gonna end up 16 and pregnant just like your mother". "I never met someone who talked so much and says so little", "I hate you, you ruin everything".

And the funny thing is, even with all the hate and vitriol you aimed at me as a helpless child, in spite of your constant rejection of my very existence, the part that hurts the most is that you never even tried. Not once.

Not a track meet or an ROTC drill meet. Not one brain bowl or one homecoming. Not one honor roll ceremony. I’ve never heard the word “proud” come out of your mouth.

I tried so hard to make you love me, and when you didn't, I spent years trying to find someone who would. I didn't know what love was meant to feel like because you were the only example I had. I thought love screamed and hit and hated, so I loved men who did those things. It almost cost me my life.

It ended a life. You would never know, because how could you? You’ve never asked how I am. You never cared what I’m doing as long as it didn’t cost you time or money. How would you know that I’m a mother of angels? You couldn’t know. You weren’t there when I cried so hard I threw up.

You weren’t there when I made a makeshift memorial in my backyard. You weren’t there for the days that followed. Pretending to be ok for my son. You weren’t there.

And now I have a precious daughter. The most beautiful girl on earth. Her daddy loves her. He reads her stories every night and tells her that she's beautiful and strong and capable. She is all the things you stole from me. You were given such an incredible and precious gift, and you did everything you can think of to destroy it. You only destroyed my need for your presence in my life.

I'm almost certain that I will never see you again, and I have made my peace with that. I have grieved for the father I never had all my life. I have never stopped loving you. Not one moment of my life, but I have stopped begging you to love me back. You are getting old and you are realizing now that you need someone who loves you more than ever. You need help and care and support that I just can't give you.

I refuse to tear open the wounds I've healed in your absence for your benefit. All you ever had to do was to keep me safe, to keep me warm; and you couldn't.

You didn't.

You chose WRONG.

You kicked a child out in favor of your wife. You knew she lied about me and chose to side with her anyway, and when she said "it's me or her"; you chose wrong.

You took me away from my brother. My dog. My home. You threw me away. You didn't even have the decency to keep up with our "daddy daughter dates" once a week while I lived with your brother; who is a good, kind, patient and loving person. You ruined me. Why on Earth would I want you in my life? I'm not a masochist. I have suffered enough.

You have a choice.

You can continue to blame me for everything and the decline of our relationship at the age of 11; or you can take responsibility for your wrongs and fight to prove you deserve to be in my life.

I already know which path you will take, but it doesn't stop me hoping you will prove me wrong.

I knew you for 13 years.

I haven't known you for 23.

You've become a stranger; one filled with hate.

Love overflows and fills every cup, hate has left you an empty husk.

I love you. Goodbye dad.

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