How I Got My Agent + Book Deal

and the despair I experienced along the way...

Since I’m writing this post, it’s clear I’ve made it! I have a lovely agent and a book deal and I’m currently less than three months out from my pub date! Despite me being so close to achieving one of my oldest dreams, I’m actually riddled with anxiety and dread—but that’s a story and explanation for another time. For now, I want to discuss my journey to publication. I’ve gotten tons of questions on how I got my agent and my book deal, so I figured I’d make it all into one giant post! I will also include my query letter in this newsletter so it’s accessible to anyone who needs help writing their own.

I am going to get really honest in this post. This post is also super long. Just a forewarning.

Okay! Let’s begin!

I’ll save you the long story where I start before I could even write and then go on to detail my journey to writing the four books that came before THIS RAVENOUS FATE. So let’s begin around the time I got the idea for TRF, saving y’all about an hour of your day (you’re welcome).

Fall of 2021 I was depressed and felt like I had to be the worst writer ever. I was fresh off a rejection from a mentorship program for my other book and I had just finished writing a romance book to distract myself from the despair of that and being deep into my last ever fall semester of college. I was sending voice messages to my good friend, Ali, and as my depressed brain loves to be morbid, we happened upon the topic of immortality. We discussed the bitterness that came with growing super old and literally rotting, but never dying as an immortal creature. At the time, I taking a class about Black women writers and that week we were discussing writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The macabre and the glamorous. Soon after this conversation, everything fell together and I had a solid idea. I wasn’t sure, however, if I was ready to right it. I still felt super down about my writing because I had just been rejected from a mentorship program with my other book that I thought was the true book of my heart. That book was completely different from TRF—I had only written adult fantasy by now and had just finished drafting my first adult romance book a couple weeks before the idea for TRF came to me. I really believed that the first book I ever wrote, my dual POV high fantasy dragon book, would be the one I would query first. I had people telling me that it was time to stop stalling and finally query—I’d written multiple books by now. It was TIME. But when my dragon book got rejected, I knew it wasn’t ready to query and I wanted to focus on something else to take my attention away from the burn. So, this shiny new idea about immortal creatures during the Harlem Renaissance was perfect, even if at the time, I wasn’t positive I was going to query it. Not yet anyway. I’ve always been a drafter at heart. I love to write and write and write without ever thinking of the possible future of the project. The thought of hoping for any future for TRF this early on stressed me out, so I decided to just write and see what happened. I think I literally told myself “Just write it! What’s the worst that could happen?”

Not putting pressure on myself became a bit difficult when nearing the end of the year, I discovered the brilliant literary agent, Emily Forney. My wonderful friend, Kaylie Smith, did a live with her on Instagram and their dynamic as well as Emily’s vision for her authors and the hard work she does as an agent just spoke to me. I remember in that moment just knowing that she was my dream agent. Which. I know. Everyone says not to have one, but I couldn’t help it. Emily was the ONE. That in turn made me more serious about writing TRF. This was around the time I decided to become more active on writer Twitter and move away from book Twitter to find more writing friends and learn more about the industry and gauge the overall interest in the type of books I wrote. I kid you not, the first Tweet I made about TRF, which I then called ‘Harlem Book’ (and later, ‘Bittersweet Poison’) was the first time I felt really cemented in the community. It was the first time I felt comfortable branding myself as a writer of sapphics, and it was just overall the first time in a long time that I felt confident and hopeful about my writing.

Emily also liked the tweet of me introducing TRF, which of course, I spiraled over… 

Fast forward to the New Year! January 2022, I started the first draft of TRF! I wrote tirelessly for a little over a month straight. It was probably the fastest I’ve written a whole book—99,000 words in just over a month—and also the most fun I’d had writing. The way this book flew out of me was almost like the story needed to be told. The first draft was the cleanest first draft I’d ever done (it still needed work, though, I’m no perfect angel) and I felt really, really good about it. It was then I knew. This would be the book. This would be my first official project that I queried. I was SCARED. In the time that I was drafting, I was also talking about other projects and noticing some agents liking my tweets about them. I remember feeling so hopeful and conflicted because I had posted about my dragon book and an agent specifically asked to see it and in my head I was like “oh, but this book is shelved for now, goddamnit and the project I’m actually planning on querying is so different, FUCK.” I was already putting so much pressure on myself without even being in the industry yet. I knew that I had to just let TRF exist for a bit and let myself love it for now.

The day I finished the first draft of TRF I tweeted about it—of course I did. And not only did so many people congratulate me and share my post, talking about how excited they were to one day be able to read this book (writing Twitter, I love you so dearly), thee Emily Forney followed me and messaged me, asking to read it. I literally almost crashed my car when I saw her message. Thankfully I did not, and composed a normal message back to her, but y’all. I was IN THE CLOUDS.

I knew TRF was the one because I grew so anxious to query it and let people to read it just to make sure I wasn’t hyping myself up for no reason. I could barely wait to even do a first pass of revisions before sending it off to a couple trusted friends and critique partners. My nerves were so bad, I actually snatched the early draft back before they could even properly read (from everyone except one friend, who gave me wonderful feedback—this was the same friend who helped sparked this whole idea, Ali!!). So I actually took my time to revise it. I even wrote my query letter to prepare and sent it off to friends and my wonderful mentor and friend, Jen Ferguson, for critiques. I made a plan for querying and began compiling a list of agents to query.

AND THEN.

Near the end of April, I got an email from a literary agent! This was an agent I had heard many great things about and I was so shocked to receive their message because what do I look like?? I was just a girl fighting for her life in the final semester of college while trying to clean up this first draft of my book! Reader. They wanted to read my book. So I screamed, of course, and wrote back, promising I would send the manuscript when it was ready. More pressure piled on top of me because I didn’t even know what ‘ready’ meant at this time. TRF was still in the revision trenches and I had not one, but two agents who wanted to see it! Now I knew I had to Get Serious.

Around this time, the lovely Jen Ferguson told me about the We Need Diverse Books Black Creatives Revisions Workshop. And when I tell you I felt like this opportunity was a gift from heaven. Because how did anyone know I was struggling with revisions and needed as much help as I could possibly get (everyone, probably. Because I tweeted about my suffering so much). Admittedly, I was extremely nervous about applying because the last mentorship program I applied to had me so depressed when they rejected me. But I, of course, could not let a past defeat stop me. This was an incredible opportunity and I knew I could only fail if I quit before trying. So I applied without much thought besides thinking I would absolutely be rejected, but I WAS ACCEPTED. I was so happy to have some professional help with this book, I could have cried!! Please note, you do not need professional help to edit your manuscript before querying it. Alpha/beta readers and critique partners work for plenty of people! I was extremely luck to be admitted to this program and have access to so many resources to help me prepare for publishing. I recommend looking into it if you are a Black creative! The program lasted a couple months and due to the nature of it, all participants had to hold off from querying until September.

I was okay with that because I had learned that the summer months for querying are quite slow anyway and I wanted to take my time with revising. Still, I remembered the messages I had gotten from the agents who were interested in TRF and grew antsy. I helped moderate Jen Ferguson’s book launch in May and was approached by another agent who wanted to see TRF, this time in person! What was my life! I had gone from being rejected just months ago to now having many industry professionals wanting to give me a chance. I was so, so excited, but I knew I still had hurdles to get over.

So over the summer, I focused and did my revisions. In the middle of this process, however, I received an email from ANOTHER literary agent, asking to read my book!!! Things were serious! Super serious! I sent back a grateful email, letting them know I was not allowed to query until September and kept their message in mind. I knew there was no backing down now. I put my heart and soul into these edits and finally, finally, the fall approached, and it was almost time to query.

Almost.

A lovely pitch event called #DVPit rolled around in August. I was encouraged to participate and it just happened to align perfectly with my querying timeline, so I was down. Even though I was terrible at making pitches, I knew I had to try. I enlisted my friend, Kaylie’s help and she really killed it. My pitches were so stellar because of her. And #DVPit was an incredible success. How the pitching event works is you tweet out a couple pitches for your book and hopefully gain interests from agents and editors. I think at the end of the day, I had interest from over fifty agents and over 20 editors. It was WILD. Never in my life did I think people would be this interested in my queer, Black book, but there I was, rocking back and forth in my friend’s apartment in Chicago, in shock, and feeling hopeful for the first time in forever about my writing! I was starting to think maybe it was really a good thing that my dragon book had been rejected last year because as they say, when one door closes another door opens. I would have never written TRF if I had decided to query dragon book last year. Never. The thought genuinely kind of haunts me.

Okay now, finally! September started! It was time to query! For those wondering what it means to query agents, it’s a process of sending a pitch letter and manuscript pages along to literary agents you’d want to represent you. To be traditionally published, you need a literary agent because they are the ones who send your book to publishers to be considered for publication. It is imperative that you do research on who you send your query letter to and how you send it to them. Every agent has different guidelines and you should also only be reaching out to agents that represent the genre and age category your book is in.

I’ll insert my query letter here. Not attached is the list of editors who showed interest in TRF during #DVPit, but I want to say if you have editor interest, definitely include that in your query! It really helped me!

Dear [Agent’s Name],

I’m pleased to send you BITTERSWEET POISON, a YA historical fantasy featuring queer characters, Black love, and vampire-like beings. Complete at 99,000 words, BITTERSWEET POISON is loosely inspired by the Orpheus and Eurydice legend. With dark undertones, morally gray characters, and a vibrant 1920s Harlem influenced atmosphere, my novel is perfect for fans of Netflix’s Arcane and Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights. 24 editors expressed interest in my manuscript during #DVPit. I’ve included a list after the query.

During the most morally disruptive period in US history, 18-year-old Elise Saint returns to Harlem to become heiress of her family’s reaper hunting empire. Reapers, the result of unethical testing by white physicians on African Americans, feed on human blood. But when a spreading poison claims reaper and human lives, Elise’s prestigious role as heiress is threatened before it’s even begun. A perfectionist at her core, Elise would not dare to disappoint her family. Failure is not an option.

Although Layla Quinn has been dead for years, her heart still beats. As a reaper, she lives a damned life of murderous impulses and is tormented by a constant need for blood. The only thing she hates more than her reaperhood is the person who caused it, her ex best friend, Elise Saint. Consequences be damned, Layla wants her dead. 

As reapers start turning human, a potential cure for both the spreading poison and reaperhood alters the power imbalance in Harlem. And when Layla is blamed for a Saint murder, Elise is the only one who can offer her immunity from prison. While Layla must team up with the person who damned her for a chance to become human once more, Elise tests the boundaries between humans and reapers, where blood bled is just blood owed and one wrong turn could mean toppling her family’s empire and becoming damned herself. If they can settle their strife, they might get what they want, but risk inciting new mutinies, destroying their homes and themselves in the process.

I am a queer, Black woman from California and recent graduate from Loyola Marymount University. I have written four other manuscripts, have been selected for the We Need Diverse Books Second Annual Black Creatives Fund Revisions Workshop, and run the YouTube and TikTok accounts—Pages of Hayley and hayleyybaileyy—where I discuss books with 86,000+ followers.

Thank you,

Hayley Dennings

It was the end of September and by now, I already had a list of agents I wanted to query, some more urgently than others because of their interest during #DVPit and some that had reached out long before the book was even ready. While querying, I used a technique I actually got from Chloe Gong’s ‘How I Got My Agent’ post! It’s pretty standard advice that involves querying in small batches first to agents that are known to respond quickly (you can see these stats on Querytracker) so you can gauge whether your query and first pages are working. I began querying on a Friday, which in hindsight is kind of wild because that meant I ran the risk of hearing nothing for two whole days over the weekend (I think in my head at the time I just believed the agents would spend the weekend reading my pages LOL). Still, everything worked out!

My request/response rate honestly shocked me because I was kind of self conscious about my first pages back then. But once the full and partial requests began rolling in, I got even more nervous about agents reading more of the book. All I could think was “oh okay so my query and first pages are working, but what if the actual book itself SUCKS.” Spoiler, quite a few agents Did Not think it sucked (thank god). In fact, I sent my first query out on Friday morning (?) And got a full request half an hour later??? Granted, the query had gone straight to some agents’ email inboxes instead of through Querytracker because they had requested that of me, so I was lucky here. I had a couple more requests and responses before the day ended, then I believe the weekend was mostly quiet. But then…Monday morning, while I was texting my friends between meetings at work, an email notification went off on my phone. And it was from the first agent who requested my book! Also the first agent who had emailed me way back in the spring, asking to read TRF! SHE WANTED TO SET UP A CALL.

Of course, I was not normal about this and I freaked out. My friends freaked out with me. The most wild part about this was that I still had to go back to work and pretend like everything was normal and fine, when internally, everything was not normal and fine.

Eventually I composed myself enough to respond to the agent and schedule a call. We had the call a couple days later and it was so wonderful, I could have cried. Just hearing someone—a complete stranger and major person in the industry—speak so highly about my book and my potential to make a career in this industry meant everything to me. Now, me being the highly anxious person I am, still held my breath a bit during this call because even though she said all these nice things, she still did not say she was offering me rep. I still thought “oh maybe this is just her about to ask me to revise and resubmit my book.” Which is FINE, I just wanted to prepare myself. So that’s what I did!

But then I was doubly surprised when nearing the end of the call she in fact did offer me rep!!!!!!!

I had to contain myself, I was so excited and grateful and in full disbelief. I told her how thankful I was and of course asked her all my questions. I asked to have two weeks to make a decision, which I believe is industry standard. I wanted to do more research, talk to her current clients, and of course give the other agents I had queried a chance to read and respond.

Once the call was over, I nudged the rest of the agents with my query and manuscript, and sent off a few more queries to other agents at the top of my list. While I waited, I talked to some of the offering agent’s clients and gained more insight into what it would be like working with her. By this point I knew everything would probably be okay. I had an offer just over three days into querying and no matter what the other agents with my book said, I would still have that offer! And with the word from her clients and everything on her website, I could tell she was a wonderful agent. I was lucky! Still, I was nervous. Reminder, I have anxiety and a tendency to overthink everything. I could not just accept the first offer without letting the other agents I had queried get back to me.

So I waited! Something I find some people don’t really talk about in the querying process is how even though the offer nudge is an exciting thing to get to do, it also comes with a lot of rejections. Because agents are busy people, they sometimes don’t have time to read on a deadline. I got a lot of rejections that were related to that after I nudged. Despite having an offer in hand, it was still kind of hard knowing that I was basically shutting out other options without giving them a proper chance. There was one agent (the one who had approached me in person at Jen’s event a couple months earlier) who was literally going on vacation the moment I sent her my offer nudge and I was in distress over her saying she would have to try her hardest to read by my deadline because WHAT IF. WHAT IF SHE WAS THE ONE and I didn’t give her enough time!!???

As you can imagine, I did a lot of talking myself down during those two weeks.

Pretty soon after I sent my offer nudge, I got a message from Thee Emily Forney on Querytracker. Cue another freakout on my behalf because I thought it would be another rejection. But it was not! She wanted to set up a call!

Of course I wasted no time in setting up a call and my call with Emily was incredible. Her vision for TRF blew me away and she gave me so much hope and confidence in being able to establish a long-lasting career. When she offered me representation I basically had to fight myself to not say YES, I ACCEPT on the spot. At this point, I still had over a week to go on the deadline I had given to other agents. I had two offers and I was spiraling over them both. I never in a million years dreamed I would be in a situation where I had to decide between two lovely agents. I was in shambles (positive).

Time stretched on and I got messages from three more agents, each one asking to set up a call, each one resulting in an offer of representation!!! One of these agents I literally called with the night before the final day of the deadline (the agent who had been on vacation—bless her for finishing my book in time, for real) and another agent I called the morning of my deadline. All in all, I ended up with five offers of representation, which again, is insane. I never in my life thought I would be in this predicament, choosing between five incredible, incredible agents. I want to reiterate that these agents were all so amazing to me. Every call I had only made me feel more confident and hopeful about getting TRF published and being an author. It was really hard to choose not only because of that, but also because I have been on the other side of rejection and I did not want to be the one rejecting these lovely people. Of course, I knew it had to be done and getting advice from some of my friends made things a bit easier.

They helped me realize that while an agent can love your book and be huge in the industry, what also matters is how you connect with them. And whether I would have an overwhelming amount of “what ifs?” in signing with one over the other. The most important thing to me was feeling safe with my books. As a queer, Black woman, I know that the publishing industry is not always kind to people that look like me. I always dreamed of having a Black woman championing my stories and that is only one of the many, many reasons, I accepted Emily Forney’s offer of rep. I could gush about Emily forever, but this post is already so long, so I won’t do that here. Just know that she is everything and has been a dream to work with.

I accepted Emily’s offer and announced our partnership just a few days later and felt probably the happiest and most excited I have in years. This happiness would be fleeting, though. Because next came sub...

Looking back, I was actually so excited to go on sub, which if you don’t know what sub is—it’s short for submission, which is when agents submit their clients’ books to editors at publishing houses for a chance at publication. Pretty much everyone I know says it’s worse than querying, which at this point, I agree with wholeheartedly, but recently agented Hayley in October of 2022 did not want to believe that. People tried to tell me just because querying went smoothly doesn’t mean sub will go smoothly. They also tried to tell me that most people don’t sell the book they got their agent with. Oh! That had me real scared!

Emily on the other hand was HYPED. So then I was hyped.

We did two rounds of revisions for TRF before the holidays. Then she sent me a sub plan in early January and BOOM, by mid January my book was officially on sub.

The waiting was the worst part. As someone who has OCD and serious control issues because of that, I hated not being in control here. I know other people love sub for this exact reason—because they know it’s out of their control, so they can just go about their lives and work on the next project and completely forget about sub. I could not do this. Every day, every hour, every other minute, I was thinking about sub. It became obsessive very quickly.

Something amazing happened the Monday after we went on sub, though! I went on sub on Wednesday, then by Monday morning, Emily texted me, explaining how we had interest from a UK publisher! This editor had read TRF in one sitting and was so excited about it. She wanted to know how things were looking on the US side of publishing. At this point, we hadn’t really heard anything from US editors, but TRF had been with them for less than a week, so we were still super early in the process. I allowed myself to hope here because surely if one editor was interested this early on, that was good news! Right! Right???

Things got even more wild from here because before we could even set up a call, Emily texted me about a film agent absolutely loving TRF and wanting to call to discuss. So not only was I spiraling over the publishing side of things, now I got to introduce myself to a new rabbit hole surrounding the film and TV side of things!!!

We had a call with the film agent and everything was AMAZING. I began to dream about TRF becoming a TV series or a movie and truly believed everything was going to work out for me because it HAD to. Things were going too well for everything to fall apart. Everything was going to be great!

We met with the UK editor a couple weeks later and of course I fell in love with her vision for TRF. I was so EXCITED. Mind you, at this point, they still had to bring TRF to acquisitions, which I know is where a lot of books die. Publishing has……..so many different hoops you have to jump through. Realizing this started to mess with my head a little bit.

Despite having this pretty solid interest in TRF, things were still super quiet for a long time after these meetings. The UK editor had to bring TRF to her team, who then had to read, who then had to bring it to acquisitions, so I knew that would be a pretty long process there. Over time, some rejections rolled in, which I tried not to take personally (and failed). But eventually, I got word that the UK team was taking TRF to acquisitions and they wanted to move forward with TRF “no matter what!” WOHOO!

A week or so later in early March, we officially had an offer from them!!!!!!!!!

This is where things started to get a little hectic. We still had some editors with TRF that we wanted to give sufficient time to so Emily set a deadline for them all to read and give their answers by. Across the pond, there was another UK publisher interested, so the UK rights ended up going to auction. Around this time, the Bologna Book Fair was happening, so publishers were also super busy and I just assumed that meant everyone would reject TRF because of time constraints, but I chose to hope for the best anyway.

Okay here’s where I get serious and honest and…depressed. During this time I found out about some editors who really loved TRF, but couldn’t get it through acquisitions. What really hurt about these rejections was the reasoning. A lot of the feedback was the same, yet none of it had real substance that I could work with to make TRF better. The main thing editors rejected TRF for was it being “too heavy on the race stuff”, “too dark”, or the publishers “already having a sapphic Black author.” Oh! Okay! Even though it’s been over a year since I’ve heard these rejections, they still stick with me. They stuck with me while revising TRF with my current editor, they stuck with me while writing my new projects, they stick with me now when I get a new idea wonder if this book too will one day be rejected because it’s what—too Black??? I say this not because I hold a grudge against these publishers, but because I want other Black writers going into publishing to not be blindsided by the amount of intolerance and straight up racism that still exists within the industry. Even though you see Black authors getting book deals and winning awards and becoming bestsellers, there are still people they probably come into contact with every step of the way who do not believe we should be there. It’s frankly distressing to see how many statements calling for diversity a publishing house can come out with, but still be racist! Anyway, I just had to say that. I want to be fully transparent in this post and even a year later, with a publisher backing my Black, queer book that’s coming out in just over two months, these things still haunt me.

Okay, now back to my sub story.

The deadline approached with lightning speed and just before it closed, I hopped on a call with an editor at Sourcebooks—Wendy McClure! We had a wonderful talk, which I think really came at the right time because she was so excited about the major themes of TRF and how it celebrated Blackness. I was fully prepared for any publishing person at this point to tell me that they would publish my book on the condition that I tone down its “Blackness”, but thankfully, Wendy loved TRF for what it was and even wanted to go deeper into the heart of the story I had created. I was so, so grateful and relieved.

The deadline came, TRF passed acquisitions at Sourcebooks, and we officially had an offer of pub for the US! WOHOO! Side note, but not really a side note, the day I got the call from Emily that things were closing on the US side, I felt maybe 10% joy and about 90% depression because I had been at a funeral! It put so many things into perspective for me that day. I remember her struggling to read me because I literally could not muster up the energy to feel joy even though I really wanted to because, come on! I was literally achieving my dream of becoming a published author! But I was so depressed. I so badly want to look back at this moment and write about it now with happiness and pride, but cannot (I mean, at least I can laugh now because genuinely WTF was wrong with me). To make matters worse, all I could think about were all the rejections I had received leading up to this moment. When I’m sad, every thought I have becomes sad. So while I was so, so grateful that I had this incredible editor who loved my book and a publishing team who was thrilled for it, I was still a terrified mess and felt like a failure (I want to reiterate that I was and still am grateful, but again—my mentally ill brain makes every little thing I go through into a huge deal) mostly because of the things I know some people felt about TRF. I wish I could go back and tell myself then that it doesn’t matter what those other editors said. What matters is the opinions of the people who do want to support me. I could not begin to properly explain this dilemma to you if I tried. And that’s the real fucked up part of mental illness for me; it’s oftentimes inexplicable. So I will just leave it at this:

People say not to have expectations when it comes to putting your book on sub because of the disappointment it can bring and in some ways, they are right. It does not only take one yes to be published. You need a yes from an agent, you need a yes from an editor, you need a yes from that editor’s entire team, and a yes from marketing and publicity and even the president. It takes a lot to get to that point, from not only publishing, but also YOU. So while I was happy to be getting published, I was mostly just relieved to be out of the trenches. But also, these people who tell you not to hope could be wrong. You can always end up exactly where you need to be with a book deal and a dream! Allow yourself to dream because dreams are the driving force behind so many of our actions.

I’m proud of myself for making it to this point! I am proud of myself for even writing a book and putting it out there. I did something that many dream of—that I have dreamed of for so long. Nothing can take that away from me.

After the US sale closed, the UK auction ended with two offers that were so similar, that I just had to go with my gut. And that was the first editor who I had had a call with—Natasha Qureshi at Hodderscape.

So then I was officially being published in the US by Sourcebooks Fire and in the UK by Hodderscape!

So here I am, finishing up this post, over a year after all of these events have occurred. It’s been special reflecting on everything and coming to these moments with fresh eyes and a now finished version of TRF sitting on my computer, with ARCs on my bookshelf just a few feet away from where I’m currently sitting as I write this.

I am beyond lucky and privileged to have gotten to where I can say “my book comes out in a couple months!” It feels surreal. The rollercoaster of emotions I went through getting the book published have absolutely been worth it, even if in the moment it felt like my life was over (can you tell I’m a dramatic person LOL).

This post is incredibly long now, so I will let y’all go, but if you would like to, THIS RAVENOUS FATE is available for preorder and to add on Goodreads! I cannot wait for you all to read this book (some of you already have!)!!!

Thank you for coming along with me on this journey and until next time!!