Our First Inspirational Story!

First, I want to clarify that there is a difference between our stories of Successful Cupid Connections and Inspirational Stories. The Cupid Connections are when one of the entries on this blog receives and accepts an offer of rep from one of our agents participating on the blog such as the one found at this link. These Inspirational Stories are simply great stories from others to offer inspiration.


For my first one I thought it would be super-dee-duper to hear from Krista from the oh-so amazing Mother.Write.Repeat blog. (She also participated in our Blind Speed Dating event during February as Entry #2.) Her blog is awesome and helps writers in numerous ways, including her monthly "An Agent's Inbox" contests and cool interviews with agents. 


If you don't already know, she's fab so I'll let her take over now...


**When Cupid asked me to share a little advice and encouragement about the querying process, my first thought was that I was the perfect person to write this post :) I queried my first manuscript in 2008, and here it is, 2012, and I’m just landing an agent, almost four years exactly after I sent my first query.

To be honest, I thought my last manuscript was going to be the One. It was the third manuscript I’d queried, so I definitely knew what I was doing, and my request rate was well over fifty percent. I received multiple revision requests and got all kinds of positive feedback, but in the end, nobody loved it enough to offer.

I was devastated, heartbroken. I’d thrown myself over the cliff, certain my parachute was finally going to open, but instead, I slammed into the pavement in full-scale freefall. The rejections hurt more because I knew how close I was.

I started querying my fourth manuscript in a weird in-between place. I felt good about the project, really good (one of my critique partners read the whole thing in one sitting, and another couldn’t wait to recommend it to her agent), but I was well aware of the fact that querying, like life, usually doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to.

And so it was with Steve. (That’s what I call him around the house, since THE REGENERATED MAN AND ME is a little more of a mouthful.) I’d imagined getting an offer within a couple of weeks from one of the fast responders I’d queried, but that didn’t happen.

As it turned out, what did happen was way better than anything I could have planned.

A few weeks ago, I signed with Kate Schafer Testerman, the agent who was literally at the top of my list, and I couldn’t be more excited. (If you’re not already sick of me, you can check out part one and part two of the story on my blog.) She’s the agent I would have picked if I could have picked anyone, and she picked me.

I’m not going to tell you to keep going, to never give up, because when you’ve been going for a while and you’re still waiting for that miracle, that’s the last thing you want anybody to tell you. Sometimes taking a step back, at least for a while, is the best thing to do, and that’s okay. But what I am going to say is that you never know when life will surprise you. We writers should know better than anyone that the best stories are the ones you don’t try to force.**

Great words! Thanks Krista!! And Congratulations to you and Kate!