Well, it finally happened. I finally got to craft one of these posts myself. And it feels…surreal? Overwhelming? Exciting? Yes to all of those. But also, the brain has this wondrous ability to immediately worry about the NEXT BIG THING once you’ve accomplished a goal, so this post is a great opportunity for me to reflect on the work it took to get here, and now you all have to hear about it too.

It all started three years ago, when I really really wanted to find a book with creepiness and mystery, but also lots of romance, but also a bunch of teenagers stuck in a competitive environment. Also, make it the 1950s. Weird thing for a twenty-something year old to want? Yeah probably. But the issue was I couldn’t find it, anywhere. And so I thought to myself, “What if I made it?” After a year of daydreaming, I looked up “How to write a novel” on Google, and proudly sat down and plotted my first manuscript, Blondie vs The Nuclear Family.

Boy, was I confident. There’s nothing quite like the high of not knowing how much you don’t know. I was convinced that book would be an instant best-seller. I day-dreamed about the outfit I’d wear at the movie premiere. I picked out the cast that would play my characters. Then, tragedy struck. I learned about the query trenches. And I could never go back to not knowing how much I didn’t know.

I had a choice to make: give up on the whole thing, or push forward and learn everything I possibly could about querying. I obviously chose the latter, and after finishing my manuscript, and utilizing my first, very patient beta readers, I entered the trenches for myself. Kind of.

My first time putting my book idea into the world was during #PitDark, a Twitter pitch event for books with dark themes. For those who are unfamiliar, the idea is that you pitch your book in one tweet using the contest hashtag, and literary agents will scroll through the hashtag and “heart” pitches they’re interested in. If you’re one of the lucky ones to get an agent-like, then you email your query letter and the first pages of your manuscript to the interested agent, and basically get put at the top of their slush pile.

People told me not to get my hopes up because agent-likes were rare and a lot of my success would be dependent on the Twitter algorithm. I tried to keep my expectations low. I really did. So it’s not an exaggeration to say that my mind was BLOWN when I received 8 agent likes and 1 editor like. Was I over the moon? Heck ya. Did I do a happy dance in the aisle of Hobby Lobby? Yep. Did this inflate my over-confident ego even more? You know it.

I sent off my query and pages to these agents, and got several full requests over the next few weeks. I was on top of the world. I was gonna be one of those unicorns who wrote a book, got an agent in two weeks, and had a book deal within a couple months. No one could stop me.

And then, my first rejection came. And then my first rejection on a full manuscript. And then three more rejections. You better believe I locked myself in my room and cried into my pillow.

But after taking a couple of weeks to collect myself, I decided to keep querying. I did everything I was supposed to do. I queried in batches. I researched agents and personalized each letter. I even created an Excel spreadsheet of agents. And I actually had a pretty amazing full request rate. But at the end of the day, every full request turned into a rejection. Finally, after six months of querying, I came to accept one simple truth: my first book baby just wasn’t marketable enough. Also, my craft needed a lot of work. So I sent out one last batch of “what do I have to lose” queries, and I shelved the book.

I took a break for a while, but the itch to write grew like an infection, as it does for those of us addicted to the pen. I had an idea in the back of my mind and it was…well, honestly, it was basically the same concept but in a scary hotel with a lot more blood and not 1950s themed. But it was marketable, and I knew it. It wasn’t part of a trilogy, it didn’t have a sci-fi twist, and it would hit every freaking beat of Save the Cat or so help me.

When I finally sat down to write If These Halls Could Talk, it came out FAST. I wrote and wrote and wrote until it was done. It was also around this time that I met my wonderful writing group, Cool Moms Write Books, and oh my goodness! What a game changer to find a group of hilarious, talented people who support your work and believe in you, but will also make your book the best it can be. When it came time for Halls to be beta read, I had a whole team of writers to polish her up real nice.

Because of this, when I sent out my first batch of queries, I was CONFIDENT. I participated in #PitDark again, and got decent interest. My first full requests came within a couple of weeks. And then! Crickets. And rejection. And more crickets. I don’t know what it was about this round of querying, but I had a significantly larger amount of queries that received no response at all.

Honestly, the silence was really disheartening. I thought I’d done everything right this time. Eventually, I told my husband “I don’t know if I’ll ever get an agent or be on shelves, but that’s okay. I’ll just control what I can control.” I committed to reading tons of craft books, writing every single day, and submitting short stories to contests. I created a note in my phone titled “Getting better at writing”, and I was determined to become the best writer I could no matter how long it took, even if it meant I never got an agent. See! Here’s the note for proof! (Notice I didn’t get very far on it…at all. Also, I spelled the magnificent Maggie Stiefvater’s name wrong. I really did have a lot to learn.)

But that’s the thing about querying. It all turns around so fast. Remember that last-ditch, “what do I have to lose” query batch for my first book? Well in December, 8 months after I sent my last query for Blondie vs The Nuclear Family, I got a full request. I was really confused. I thought the request was for If These Halls Could Talk, but upon closer inspection, it was for Blondie. At this point, I was so used to having my full manuscripts rejected, that I didn’t even get excited. I just sent the full of Blondie and carried on with my day.

Christmas and New Years passed, and I got a response. I opened it preparing to read a rejection letter, but it was…different. They said they really enjoyed reading my manuscript and wanted to see some of my other projects. Well. I FREAKED OUT. I messaged my writing group and other writing friends and we collectively lost our minds. My one friend, who was already agented, told me her agent sent a similar email before offering representation a few days later.

I was ready. I was going to have an offer within the week. I sent the agent the first pages of If These Halls Could Talk, along with the summary for my next project. And they responded right away! They told me that my other projects seemed perfect for their list, but they needed time to review my pages. So I waited some more. And checked my email every few minutes. Days turned to weeks, and I hadn’t heard anything back. My hope dwindled again, but I took solace in the fact that I’d gotten closer than I ever had before.

The agent was wonderful, and checked in after several weeks to tell me they hadn’t forgotten about me, but I waited for a little over two months. Until I got an email in my inbox that said, “Hi Aubrey, I think we should chat.” Then I hyperventilated. What did it mean!? Was this a positive “I want to offer representation” chat, or was this a Revise and Resubmit chat? Or worst of all, was it an “I’m sorry, but I can’t take you on at this time” chat?

We scheduled a time for a Zoom call, and it ended up being an offer! The agent was kind and professional, and answered tons of questions for me. They explained what they loved about my book, and what they wanted to change, and I agreed with all of it. I couldn’t believe it! Blondie, my first book ever, was going to be submitted to editors at huge publishing houses. As is industry standard, I asked for two weeks to inform other agents who I’d queried that I’d received an offer.

Because I’d watched a million “How I Got My Agent” vlogs, and read a ton of posts just like this one, I expected to send my “Notice of an Offer” email and immediately get responses from tons of agents asking to read my manuscript. That is…not what happened. I got a few extremely kind passes from agents who didn’t have time to read my full manuscript before my deadline, and a lot of no responses. Then I thought to myself “I thought I had more queries out still”. I double-checked Query Tracker, changed some of my search settings, and realized, yes! I did have a few that had automatically closed out due to a lack of response after 100 days.

I debated for a minute about wether I should send a “Notice of an Offer” to these agents, especially since some of them had a “no response means no” policy, but I thought “what the heck”, and did it anyway. Within the next 24 hours, I had two agents reply who wanted to read my full manuscript before my deadline. One of them turned into an extremely wonderful step aside. However, the other one started posting some pretty interesting tweets on her Twitter feed:

I thought “Oh wouldn’t that be crazy if this was about my book? What are the chances?” I even sent a screenshot to my writing group and we debated over the odds it was about If These Halls Could Talk. But then I told myself I was being ridiculous and moved on with my day. That night, there was another tweet.

Now this one was a little more promising, because If These Halls Could Talk is horror. I started getting pretty excited, and my excitement made me bold. I liked the tweet, then went to bed. When I woke up in the morning I had a DM from Ali herself. She told me she’d emailed me and that I was blowing her mind. I smiled like a maniac, and checked my email to find a message that made my day even better. She said she was loving the book and would be in touch. At this point, I checked her Twitter profile and found THESE tweets:

Okay NOW I was ecstatic. Ali set up a time to meet with me for the Monday before my Tuesday deadline. I couldn’t believe this was all happening. But I also had a decision to make, and it was a really hard one, because the first agent who offered was just as genuinely wonderful as Ali.

For most of the next couple days, I had absolutely no clue who I would choose. I looked at their Publisher’s Marketplace deals about a million times. I stalked their clients. I dug deep on their Twitter feeds. I researched as much as any sane person could research. And I STILL didn’t know. My husband, best friend, and writing group probably got so sick of my desperate, indecisive ramblings as I weighed my options. By Sunday night, I had a pretty good idea of who I would choose, but I still wasn’t positive.

And then came Monday morning and my call with Ali. And, oh boy. She was everything I wanted and needed in an agent and more. She was enthusiastic, but also realistic. She outlined a very clear vision for If These Halls Could Talk, and the success she imagined it having. And most importantly, our communication styles just clicked. She introduced me to her wonderful client, Lora Senf who wrote the award-winning Middle Grade horror, The Clackity, and I realized the resources I would have in my horror career with Ali as my agent and Lora as my agent-sibling.

Ultimately, this is what tipped the scale in Ali’s favor. With Ali, my debut novel would be If These Halls Could Talk, which would establish my niche as a horror author, a genre I have grown really passionate about over the last year. With the first agent, I would be debuting with Blondie vs The Nuclear Family, then trying to change my genre to transition more into horror. While I love my first book and I’m so proud of it, I knew in my heart that it wasn’t the best book to debut with.

While I’m sure the first agent would have been flexible with my debuting options, I also knew that Ali’s client list was too big of a resource to give up, especially while trying to build a whole career around this genre. And Ali’s bubbly, ultra-supportive personality was the cherry on top, of course.

So, if you’ve stuck around to the end of this post, which turned out much longer than I’d intended, you have now discovered what a journey it was to get here. I realize that many people face a lot more rejection and years of waiting for this day to come, and I consider myself really lucky. Because luck does play a huge part in it. But I’m also really proud of the work I did to get to this point, and how much I grew along the way. I can honestly say, compared to three years ago, when my first book was barely incepted in my mind, I am leaps and bounds ahead.

There was a point when I thought I’d never have the determination it takes to finish a whole book. I was wrong. There was a point when I thought I’d never find a great critique group that I felt comfortable in. I was wrong. There was a point where I thought I’d never get to experience the rush of scheduling “The Call”. I was wrong. Every single time I stopped believing in myself, I proved myself wrong, and I invite you to do the same. Cause if you really love writing, and you really want this, you don’t stop. And when you don’t stop, you grow and you learn A LOT. And with that growth, comes success.

One final thing: Next week I will be sending out my first newsletter, which will include my very specific breakdown of my QUERY STATS, so if that’s your kind of thing, then make sure to subscribe!

Thank you so much for reading, and as always, stay spooky.