Now, let me toss off my writer hat and bust out the math:
AGENT QUERY STATS
Total submitted: 33 agents
Sources:
– Writing in the Margins Query Contest Winner (6 agent requests) — this contest really helped me polish my query letter… thanks to YA author Justina Ireland!
– #DVpit Twitter Pitch Contest (19 agent requests)
– various other SCBWI resources
Timeline: I submitted to agents in March and April 2016, and then signed with an offer in May 2016!
Full requests : 16 *happy dance followed by sheer panic at waiting for responses*
Offers: 3 (Yes, THREE! This was a hard choice, and in the end I went with the agent that I connected with the most and knew would be an advocate for my work and bring diverse voices to mainstream fiction because #WNDB. Plus, Erin Murphy Literary Agency is a fabulous agency for the Children’s and YA book market!)
Signed: Tricia Lawrence at the Erin Murphy Literary Agency
When you only look at the stats, it makes it seem so slip’n’slide easy. Nope. What these little numbers don’t capture are the times when I’d frantically refresh my inbox only to be crushed by another rejection, or the months of polishing my query and manuscript until even birds would fly through that glass. And all that hope burning in my chest that maybe, just maybe I’ll see my book on a shelf one day. Even with an agent, it’s still not a guarantee that my novel ROMAN & LYNX will find a publisher. But there’s always hope. (Spoiler alert: If you ever end up reading my novel, you’ll see just how much Banksy’s art inspired my ending.)
Wait, you said you found your agent on Twitter?
Oh, right, that part! Yes, indeed.
#DVpit is an amazing pitch contest on Twitter organized by agent Beth Phelan to help promote more diverse voices in fiction (THANKS, @beth_phelan )! Turns out tons of agents, editors and writers all converged on Twitter on April 19th and spread the love. If they favorited your 140-character pitch, then it meant that you could send them your query and a specific number of pages. Yes, you can already do this… but this pitching contest really brought out the agents that are craving YOUR stories and it time-warped my manuscript through the endless slush pile straight to the top. Here was my pitch:
And here was my query:
Dear Agent,
Thank you for favoriting my pitch at #DVpit: “Shadowshaper meets How to Train your Dragon–a boy busting out his inner Banksy & Filipino myths in San Francisco graffiti streets.” I’m seeking representation for my diverse YA fantasy ROMAN & LYNX, complete at 51,000 words.
Roman figures the quickest way to a new reputation are spray cans and a tattered “Becoming a Renegade” checklist tucked into his sneakers. Forget his Filipino-American family’s obsession with blending in with the wallpaper. But when Roman unleashes his inner Banksy, his painting unlocks an exiled dragon-beast named Lynx into San Francisco’s graffiti streets. Paint smokes the wall, and she crashes into his world—obsidian scales, smoke wings, claws splitting through the billboard.
Now, Roman—with the help of a starry-eyed graffiti girl named Skull—must hunt down a snarky dragon with her stomach set on devouring every hipster in San Francisco. Forced to face the Filipino legends of his ancestors, Roman needs to convince his gray-groovy Granny that graffiti might not be so different from the island cave paintings trapped in her lost memories. If he doesn’t gain Lynx’s trust and learn his own legends, the monsters of Filipino folklore will lock them both inside the graffiti walls forever.
Fans of Daniel José Older’s Shadowshaper and the movie How to Train Your Dragon will enjoy this fantasy adventure in San Francisco’s mesmerizing graffiti streets.
ROMAN & LYNX draws on my own experiences growing up in San Francisco with a mixed Filipino-American heritage. My fiction has appeared in 100 Word Story, Dactyl Magazine, DASH, and was second place in the Writer Unboxed Flash Fiction Contest (2012). I’m a member of SCBWI, and I interned at National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) where I wrote inspirational blog posts broadcasted to 400,000 aspiring writers around the world. In addition, I won for best YA manuscript at SCBWI’s LA Writer’s Day 2016 for my current work-in-progress titled “Blanca and the Ruins.”
Thank you for supporting diverse voices in literature, and I look forward to hearing from you!
Oh you know you’re just dying to read ROMAN & LYNX one day! And if there are pink wooden ponies and beat-breaking sharks living in the desert, then anything is possible:
😉
