After leaving my agent in December 2021 (read that story here), I jumped back into the Query Trenches in January, 2022 full of optimism and hope. I’d already had an agent, and the industry standards of pre-COVID seemed to imply getting another would be *easy,* especially with a much more sellable project. Memoir isn’t a genre that lends itself well to multiple projects, so for my new manuscript, I’d switched to fiction. Commercial Women’s Fiction with Sweet Romance elements, to be specific. At the time (and really still) most Women’s Fiction skewed towards Upmarket or Literary, but a few authors were writing in this space and I felt confident about my high-concept hook.

Imagine my excitement when my first query garnered a full request. “This is it!” I thought. “That didn’t take long, at all.”

Friends, she passed, and not only did she pass, but she called the project unmarketable. It was fatally flawed.

But hey, that was one agent, right? And this industry is so subjective, maybe someone else would see it differently.

For three months, the batches of queries went out and the rejections (or silences) rolled in. I had a total of three full requests (two agents and one editor) during that time, but I wasn’t too worried. The post-COVID industry was changing rapidly and a lot of COVID authors were querying their pandemic-written books. The market was saturated and low request rates were quickly becoming the norm. I had about an 8% request rate, which was right on target, as far as I could tell, for the new look of Publishing.

Luckily, when the second full pass rolled in with the same fatal flaw, it also came with extremely specific, actionable feedback, and I will always be grateful to this particular editor who took the time to explain why the project wasn’t marketable. She invited an R&R during their next open submission, and I immediately withdrew all outstanding queries to rewrite. (The agent that had the third full invited me to resubmit immediately upon completing the R&R, so I didn’t lose her interest, either.)

I took two months to rewrite the fatal flaw, as well as work on some other areas that I was steadily improving as I wrote more and more. After my stint in memoir, I’d found that CNF was a fantastic outlet for smaller works in this vein, so I was writing for litmags as well as, once again, “writing the next thing.” Nothing in writing is EVER wasted!

Once it was ready, I sent the full off to the waiting agent, jumped back into querying, and circled the date that the R&R could be resubmitted in the fall. But, before that date arrived, the editor left her position and that publishing company shut down their entire publishing arm. On the one hand, I had dodged a bullet. Authors with signed contracts were suddenly let go. On the other, at least they had a little more cachet for their query letters. Then, I saw an agent I’d queried offering to look at projects that had been burned by that situation, and with nothing to lose, I nudged her informing her of the R&R offer. (I was very clear that I wasn’t contracted.) She requested the full, as well!

Over the next year, I ended up getting six full requests from a combination of pitch events and cold querying. Thankfully, many of them were champagne rejections that were similar to those from my memoir: great writing, good concept and execution, just didn’t quite fall in love. And by now, I knew that meant I was on the right track, I just hadn’t found The Person to champion it, yet. But, I was also running out of potential agents and I’d been hard at work on The Next Thing, so as that was getting ready to query, I started wrapping up the last project. I had two fulls still out, but I’d basically been ghosted on both of them.

Then, in October, four months after I’d sent my last query and a month before I was planning to start querying the next project, I ran across an open call on Twitter for submissions to a small press: Wild Ink. What caught my eye was that it was an agent sharing the information, along with why she, as an agent and author, had gone with that particular press rather than anything larger. Their MSWL seemed like a good match, so I thought I’d give them a shot. It was literally the very last query I sent for this project.

Less than a week later, the Editor reached out to me asking if it would be okay for their sister publishing company, Conquest, to consider my work and, if so, to please send the full. At this point, I’d made my peace with this project never getting published, or maybe pursuing self-publication in the future (that’s another post for another day), so I was thrilled, but also wasn’t holding my breath. I sent the materials off and promptly forced myself to forget about the whole thing so I could focus on preparing my next manuscript for querying.

On December 13, as I was sitting in my car in the school pickup line and working on queries for my new project, an email popped up in my inbox. (Yes, it really can happen anywhere!) Already resigned, I took a moment to breathe deeply and remind myself my identity wasn’t tied to my productivity, my desirability as a writer, or my success in publishing. Then, I clicked it open.

I read it three times.

I called one of my best friends and read it out loud to her to make sure I hadn’t imagined it.

I texted my husband a screenshot and “Umm, so I think that just happened…”

Then, I hyperventilated. It was a request for a call. I knew what that meant with an agent because I’d been through the process, but I wasn’t sure it meant the same thing for a publisher. I was afraid to get my hopes up, but I was struck by something I’d read from Brene Brown a few years earlier: when we are afraid to hope for fear of disappointment, we also rob ourselves of the fullness of the joy when that hope proves itself. Basically, by numbing the hope, we numb the disappointment, but we also numb the joy. I didn’t want to risk numbing the joy, even to ease the disappointment if I was wrong. I sent a reply and set up the call.

Two days later, I had the most lovely conversation with Brittany McMunn at Conquest Publishing. She loved the premise of my project, she’d deeply connected with the characters, and they were interested in moving forward with me!

Because of the holidays, we agreed to just under a month for me to consider the offer, and I immediately emailed the remaining two fulls to inform them of the offer. I also reached out to several current authors to get their take. If you read my post about “How I Got (Then Left) My (First) Agent,” you know that one of the reasons I turned down the small press that offered on my memoir was because their own authors warned me away. Fortunately, all three authors I spoke to gave absolutely rave reviews! I also had the opportunity during this time to read an ARC of a forthcoming book Conquest would be publishing and the first few chapters of another one they’d just published, so I knew the editorial work was solid, as well.

Ultimately, I knew by then that I wanted to move forward with Conquest and wouldn’t be entertaining any offers that didn’t include signing their contract. On January 2, I informed them of my intention to sign and on January 4, 2024 my husband took me out for celebratory drinks and I signed the contract on the bar before sending it off to Brittany and lifting a glass with him.

Since then, I’ve had the warmest welcome into the Wild Ink/Conquest Family and I absolutely know I made the right choice! For some, choosing a small press might feel like “second best,” but I knew all along that I was open to that option (hence the reason I was sending the project to editors as well as agents). The biggest thing for me was finding the right home for the project, and since I have self-published and have the capacity to continue to do so, I wanted to find someone who would partner with me on the parts of publishing that I’m not as strong at. Conquest and Brittany are 100% that partnership I was looking for and I can’t wait for all of you to meet Abby, Gen, Scott, and Dylan in Summer, 2025!

Final Stats:

Round 1:

Queried 38 Agents/1 Editor

Fulls: 3 (8% Request Rate)

Round 2:

Queried 54 (I stopped tracking Agents vs/ Editors, but it was probably around 4 Editors)

Fulls: 5 (9% Request Rate)

Offers: 1