How I Got My Agent, Kimberly Fernando

In a few words, she found me in the slush pile. But...before that, came a lot of pain and anguish. I mean, a lot, a lot. The plus years of a lot. So let me tell you about that to hopefully encourage some of you to keep going.

Firstly, how about some big picture statistics:

• Started writing: 2012
• First book published: 2014 (small press)
• Total books written: 15
• Total books published: 7 (all small press)
• Total queries sent: Many hundreds
• Average request rate per book queried: +/-5%

Not great numbers but not terrible either. Still, there were times I strongly considered just chucking it all in and many more times when an agent request convinced to keep on plugging. I actually thought I'd finally made it when an agent signed me in 2015, but that all unravelled disappointingly quickly. Short-lived though it was, I learned a ton from that relationship, including red flags and what I both wanted and should realistically expect from an agent.

So, that happened and I moved on, and eventually I started querying the weird western that got me my agent. Ya want a few stats for that? Sure ya do, so let's hit it:

• First query sent: January 2021
• Total queries sent: 122
• Major revisions: 2 (based on agent R&Rs—both agents ultimately declined)
• Manuscript requests (full and partial): 8 (including Kimberly's)
• Initial query to Kimberly: 7 March 2023
• Full request received: 8 March 2023
• ‘The Call’ with Kimberly: 29 March 2023
• Accepted Offer of Representation: 12 April 2023

A few things worth noting in those statistics:

• Those R&Rs from other agents were invaluable--I’d actually never received a R&R  before (much less 2!) so that’s when I knew Little Weird Western was something special. I took all of their input to heart and  implemented as much as could without changing the core of the novel and what it meant.
• When I queried Kimberly, it was with that twice-revised manuscript--by far the best version of the novel I'd queried to that point. 
• I have never, ever gotten a full request within a day of querying, much less a response to said full request within 3 weeks of submission. Again, I credit those R&R revisions. They helped me polish the concept and make it shine.
• The ~2 week delay between Kimberly’s Offer of Representation and my acceptance was for professional courtesy: there were other agents who had requested the manuscript and I wanted to notify them of the offer on the table and give them a chance to respond before I accepted.

So, with all the agents out there, how did I end up querying Kimberly? Simple: while scouring the MSWishList site for leads, I stumbled across her post. From there, I checked out Kimberly's website to learn more about her agenting preferences and spotted this little nugget of pure gold: 

Sometimes you get lucky and all that patience and rejection pay off. We've all see the posts from authors racking up double digit agent requests and signing after just a few months (or weeks) of querying. That happens, but this also happens--there are a lot of authors out there querying for years to try and make it. If you're one of those (one like me), I hope this post offers enough encouragement to keep you going.

​To all the authors out there reading this, I hope you find your Kimberly, too.