How I Got My Agent (after 86 requests)

By Laura Galán-Wells

YAY :D Some stats for my YA novel MONSTRUOS OF MEXICO before I ramble about many other things. I am super fortunate that I got an agent offer on my first novel, but it wasn’t fast or easy. Quick stats:

86 agent requests - 14 partials, 72 fulls/partials-to-fulls

91 unique pitch contest agent likes 40 unique pitch contest editor likes 4 agent to agent referrals

3 client to agent referrals

9 R&Rs

175 queries (aka Laura is stubborn/driven)

4 ½ offers

Request rate: 45% I have a lot to say so I’m just going to get it all out :) It’s going to be a TOME. And I’m going to switch tenses sometimes, depending on my mood. I swear I don’t do this in my writing haha, but tenses will come up somewhere in this giant block of text.

PREAMBLE (skip if back history isn’t your thing) I was born in Del Rio, Texas, 2 miles from the Texas/Mexico border, but its sister city - Ciudad Acuña, across the Rio Grande, is equally important to me. I have family on both sides. They are both home, and in my mind, they are a whole circle. There is no border. English is technically my third language. My mom’s teachers in South Texas would whack her hands with a ruler if she spoke Spanish so she decided she would only speak Spanish to me so it would be ingrained, and my dad was on board. They’re both bilingual. We moved from Texas to Spain for my dad’s work when I was 4, and they put me in a preschool taught by German nuns. That was technically my second language, although it’s gone now. I still remember when I could finally speak and understand it. I learned English by full immersion in Kindergarten (still in Madrid, which is kind of funny). French was my fourth language. I used to speak it fluently, but it’s so rusty now. Our home was very literary rich. We had everything from picture books to encyclopedias in Spanish and English. Massive stacks of Reader’s Digests. Documentaries and museum visits galore. We were living in Egypt when an elementary school teacher raved to my parents about my creative writing. So my dad bought me a bunny statue sitting at a desk with a blank piece of paper, quill and ink pot and told me I was a writer and I believed him. I didn’t get back to creative writing for decades, but I always considered myself a writer because of that day. I was in South Africa for high school, and had the same teacher all four years. She was not a fan of my (genre) writing. Anything I wrote of a fiction nature would get a B and she once told me that my writing was too morbid. She seemed to reserve As for students writing about contemporary subjects. I began to suspect I was maybe actually a mediocre creative writer, and leaned hard into Math and Sciences instead - I was a mathlete, in the astronomy club, and on the science competition circuit. Non-fiction writing is where everyone seemed to agree I excelled. My first English professor tried to lure me into switching to an English major and I did do a minor, but it involved zero creative writing. It was mostly literature interpretation, which I love. My Psychology major and grad school involved research writing, and I had a job for a while translating journal articles in the social sciences into laypeople’s terms.

Years later, I started to miss writing in general, and began to do research for two different non-fiction book projects (I never wrote a word, I just did the research). This involved studying the history, mythology, folklore, etc of Mexico and Texas. And around the same time I did massive amounts of genealogy research, getting to 900+ people on my family tree. Most of that involved reading tiny cursive in Spanish, but half of my lines dead ended on paper before the 1700s/1800s. My Indigenous lines.

Fast forward to Summer of 2020. I suddenly find myself with tons of free time. No volleyball. No parkour. No weightlifting. No improv. No D&D. No camping. No strategy board game get togethers. And so I decided to extra deep dive into my non-fiction research. And hubby comes up to me one evening and asks me if I’d consider writing fiction. That it might be more fun? I guess I didn’t look like I was having fun staring at a computer screen and reading non-fiction books for years. He said he’d just finished a free online writing course by Brandon Sanderson and wondered if I’d be interested in watching it with him? He’d watch it a second time with me. Somewhere in the midst of this he surprised me with a copy of Save the Cat Writes a Novel. And I got inspired. (Yes, my hubby is an amazing person. He was probably also really bored of hearing about my non-fiction research).

PLANTSING

I knew I wanted to write a novel inspired by the research I’d been doing, particularly the mythology and folklore, but I also had an inkling that it would be difficult to break in (I had no idea how hard) and that it would be extra difficult as a writer of color. So all of that to say that I thought about marketability and my elevator pitch a LOT before I ever wrote a word. Originally my novel was going to be a new adult novel (characters were 20yo) about a sports team of ulama ball players (the ancient sport of the Americas with the first rubber balls ever) in the near future, who end up getting mutant superpowers along the lines of X-Men or Heroes. There are children going missing, and their job is to find out why. Elements of this ended up in my novel, but I moved away from superheroes, worrying it wouldn’t be marketable, and as I had done so much interesting research, I instead gave them the magical powers of Mesoamerican folklore and myth. And this remained from the original concept - an alternate history of our world in the near future, where a mysterious dome enclosed Texas and Mexico and a new dystopian nation was formed. The capital is what used to be my two sister cities - Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña - now unified into one.

I outlined the novel over a series of long walks with my hubby from July to October of 2020, and then got a skeleton of the plot, and character facts, on index cards. I was ready for my first NaNoWriMo.

I wrote a prologue, planning to write an adult novel, but by the time I got to the first chapter, I decided to write it as a young adult novel instead. The reason was that I saw a long thread on Twitter by multiple published Latinx SFF authors talking about how Latinx writers were shut out of adult SFF, and that it was easier to get published in kidlit, even if most of them had had to break in through small publishers. I got through 40k words during NaNo if I remember correctly. I technically finished the novel January 2021 at 60k+ words, but then expanded the ending up to 70k+ words by February 2021. I entered AMM and didn’t get in, and never did get into a mentorship program, though I did try, over and over again :)

But that was okay because a series of beta readers, critique partners, etc would have my back. And my novel did need help. A reminder this was the first creative writing I’d written in decades, and while I did read a MASSIVE STACK OF CRAFT BOOKS, I wrote the most complicated novel possible for my first one. Five PoV characters. Third person past. A tightly braided narrative with *multiple* plot twists. A blend of fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, alternate history, and dystopian. And a full PoC cast with heavy Mexican and Indigenous culture/folklore/mythology that I worried might make some agents subconsciously *unable to connect*.

Any agent who took it on would have to be really really committed ;)

QUERY LETTER

I began to draft my query several months before I planned to query, after reading samples on Eric Smith’s site, and Query Shark. And somewhere in the middle of Query Shark, I found a query with a teaser at the top of it that Query Shark said broke rules, but that she requested anyway. And that caught my attention, because Query Shark is all about sticking to the formula. So I used the rhythm of that teaser as a template to create my own. I then placed it at the top of my own query letter. AND I used it as one of my Twitter contest pitches over the course of a year and it was always the one that got the most agent and editor likes.

Here is the teaser, featuring my main character:

On Tochtli’s 8th birthday, her twin sister disappeared. On Tochtli’s 18th birthday, she wakes up naked on her bedroom floor with warm blood in her mouth and the broken bracelet of a neighbor girl clutched in her hand—a girl who is now missing.

As for the full query letter, it was almost as successful at getting me requests via cold querying, as the pitch was via Twitter contest likes (not all led to requests of course). I revised it with help from PubTips on Reddit, Sub it Club on FB, and Let's Get Published on Discord (where I made some of my earliest dear writer friends) so it would be good to go when I queried.

I’ll be sharing my full query letter in my newsletter, so please sign up for that at the bottom of my webpage if you’d like to see it. This is my shameless ‘reader magnet’. Note that my newsletter will be a rare sighting lol. I’ll only send something out if there’s something significant going on like an ARC giveaway or a bonus scene of a published book.

But before I could query, I had to revise… I decided I would revise for seven months, aiming to start sending out my query letter in time for #Pitmad Sept 2021.

REVISION February 2021 editor Elizabeth Buege chose me for one of her #tenqueries critiques, a pre-RevPit event, and advised me to cut my prologue, and I did. Both because many agents dislike them, and because the voice of it was adult versus the rest now being young adult. Elizabeth would later request my manuscript during the actual #RevPit, and while I wasn’t ultimately chosen, she was very encouraging.

March 2021 I won a raffle to get a critique on my query and first two chapters from agent Laurel Symonds via InkedVoices.com. She pinpointed my main writing weakness - character emotion, and she said that as I was writing in third person past, I would have to work extra hard to convey it.

May 2021 I won a 50 pages developmental edit and 30 minute coaching call from Carly Hayward, co-founder of #RevPit, via her quarterly *Light Up Voices* drawing for marginalized writers. Carly sent me a multi-page report that was just RIDICULOUSLY HELPFUL to me as I revised. I would say the most valuable to me was helping me to further differentiate my five point of view characters. And my favorite line I still remember was something like, “What is Canica’s personality beyond liking squirrels?” Which sounds snarky, but Carly is the sweetest and I realized that one of my PoV characters was very one dimensional at that stage. Anyhow, I’m so grateful to her and she is an editorial genius I highly recommend.

During my months of revision, I cut 10k words of unnecessary words/scenes and added 17k words of interiority (my writing weakness). The book - The Emotion Thesaurus - was invaluable as I went through the whole novel adding action beats (body language).

QUERYING (finally, you may be thinking)

I couldn’t resist jumping into #SFFPit July 30th, a month before the date I had set for myself to start querying. I got three agent pitch likes but they all rejected so I suppose it didn’t matter in the end as they would have seen the same sample pages a month later. #Pitmad Sept 3rd 2021 was the date I had been working towards and I was so excited for my first ever #Pitmad. I got 18 agent likes, and requests started rolling in, and my writing friends said I would probably have an agent within two weeks. Little did we know that while two of those would in fact offer, it would be thirteen months later :D But I’m getting ahead of myself.

#LatinxPitch 2021 happened twelve days later, and I got another 27 agent likes. And somewhere in there I began cold querying. It was exciting times as I waited for my first full responses.

Meanwhile I continually revised my working document, while beta readers and critique partners gave feedback. Each time an agent requested a partial or full, I’d give them the latest version. In October I did a mini revision early into querying, removing 2k more words from the early part of the novel so that the inciting incident would happen sooner, adding a teaser to the inciting incident at the end of the first chapter, and adding 2k to the ending. Around this time, my critique partner Matty (Matthew Lin), master of character arcs, suggested I switch the novel from third person past to first person present. He was concerned that I wasn’t showing enough of my characters’ emotions and interiority, and felt that the switch might help me unlock those things naturally. I thanked him for the idea and then covered my ears and sang LALALA very loudly. I had already added 17k words of interiority during my months of revision… Partial requests were turning into full requests, and agents were referring me to other agents, and I hoped that what I’d already done was enough, but it wasn't.

The rejections and R&Rs began to roll in.

R&R Agent 1 - Nov 2021

Agent 1 was a #Latinxpitch 2021 like and emailed to say she was really enjoying and wanted to make sure I was still seeking representation. Some days later, she offered a phone call to discuss the changes she had in mind for an R&R, and we talked for 35 minutes (well mostly she talked). She had so many lovely things to say that made it clear she had read my novel in depth. At the time I had 24 other fulls and 3 partials out, but she called and her notes resonated with me and I decided to tackle them. In broad strokes, there were some tweaks that made the novel even more solidly young adult (it still had some vestiges of when I had plotted it as an adult novel), I added more interiority and tension to the middle, removed a few slower scenes that were more about showing character than moving the plot along, and expanded the ending. I worked for hours six days a week over eight weeks, and somehow wrote my second novel, a MG Fantasy BUBBLES AND BONES, in this time frame as well, mostly during NaNoWriMo. I was so excited when my revision was done. In the end I cut 20k words and added 28k words.

Agent 1 rejected. “Thank you for sharing this revised version of MONSTRUOS OF MEXICO with me. You are a talented writer, and I can see you’ve made many improvements this round. Unfortunately I’m still not fully connecting with the story, so I am going to step aside confident that you will find the representation who will get behind this with the enthusiasm it deserves.”

I was fairly devastated, but my writer friends bolstered me through, reminding me that I still had dozens of fulls out, and complimenting my writing, and saying all those nice supportive things writer friends say :) Also, she was one of the first agents to tell me she was confident I would find representation, and I believed her. But I would come to hear that from dozens of agents, and it sounded less and less plausible with each full rejection. R&R Agent 2 - Nov 2021

Agent 2 was a #DVPit 2021 like and sent the loveliest loveliest email. She clearly connected with my characters, as well as the culture, being a latina herself. She gave some notes that were similar to Agent 1. That the pace of the middle was slow and could use more interiority, and that the ending needed expanding. And she made an intriguing suggestion - that I split it into a duology to allow for the space needed to add the interiority she felt was lacking. She offered phone calls as I edited, which was so kind, but I had just begun working on Agent 1’s R&R notes, and I had so many partials and fulls out that I explained I would put her duology idea on the back burner for now, and hoped that she would like the changes I made for Agent 1. She agreed to wait for that revision. R&R Agent 3 - Nov 2021 Agent 3 was interesting… She was a #Latinxpitch 2021 like, and similarly to Agent 1, she emailed to ask if I was still seeking representation. When I said I was, and mentioned I was working on an R&R revision, she said she was roping in a fellow agent, who was a latina, to write some edit notes, seeming to indicate it might also be an R&R, and said she’d be in touch “next week”. I checked my email multiple times a day but next week came and went, and eventually I sent her the revision I’d completed for Agent 1. She rejected, and I was disappointed because she suggested cutting my five PoV novel, with tightly braided story lines down to one PoV. It indicated to me that she hadn’t read the full novel. “Thanks so much for sending your revised manuscript over. It’s really great that you’ve spent time revising your story and I enjoyed dipping back into it. However, after much thought I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not quite the right person for your story. I liked your voice a lot and the setting felt original and fresh – however I found the sci-fi elements jarred with the fantasy themes and there were so many different perspectives that at times I felt the writing got a little unwieldy. I think that you could pare back the story substantially with a single narrative voice and a focus on the monstruous and have a story that really races along.”

R&R Agent 4 - Dec 2022

Agent 4 was one of my Sept #Pitmad likes (and spoiler, she offered down the road). The timing was such that before she could go into detail with her R&R notes, the revision I did for Agent 1 was ready, so she read that, and rejected. But she told me I was really close and ended with “Don’t give up!” and it did *so much* for my querying mental health at the time.

R&R Agent 5 - Jan 2022

Agent 5 was a Sept #Pitmad 2021 pitch like and read the revision I did for Agent 1. Her notes mostly specified events that happened in the first chapter so it was unclear how far in she read. She invited me to resubmit if I did a rewrite focusing “a lot more on the craft side of the story”. Ouch.

R&R Agent 6 - Jan 2022

Agent 6 was a #DVPit 2021 like and read the revision I did for Agent 1. She asked for an R&R that was very straightforward. Take the novel that was now 110k words long, and cut it by 20% and resubmit, “assuming no one snaps you up this round!”. She suggested I might try to work with someone freelancing who has worked with a major kids’ publisher if I could find one. And she gave me her reader’s notes, which included that she liked my characters fine, but didn’t love any of them. Ouch. It also included a lot of helpful notes throughout, and lovely compliments.

I shared some stats with friends right when I got the fifth R&R: 131 queries

80+ unique agent pitch contest likes over SFF/SeptPitmad/LatinxPitch/DVPit/DecPitmad (I queried most but not all)

29 outstanding queries

41 full requests

8 partial requests

Of the 49 requests, ~3/4 were from pitch contests, ~1/4 from cold queries. 4 requests were referrals from full rejecting agents to other agents.

Back to the R&R, I did decide to tackle this revision, now my second. But I worked on the edit on my own. I cut a couple of scenes. I bought the book Stein on Writing and it was invaluable. I can no longer look at a sentence without seeing filter/sticky words that can be cut. I also used ProWritingAid to help me identify even more filter/sticky words. And I did it. I cut the novel from 110k down to 83k. I did it in six weeks I believe, with my rolling method of beta readers and critique partners reading as I worked, and sent it back.

It was a rejection, sent by the reader, who I assume is training to be an agent. “(We) do agree that your cuts have streamlined the narrative here, and you haven’t lost any of what makes your manuscript so unique as a result. I’m sorry to say though that we’re still not feeling as drawn in by the characters’ voices and the writing as we’d hoped to be after revision. Again, thank you for the opportunity to read your revised manuscript, and we do wish you all the best in your search for an agent who will love and champion your work!” This one crushed me. I cried and cried and cried. It was the first time I cried while querying. I was so tired of revising with no breaks, because I’m so stubborn/driven that it’s hard for me to do fun things when I have a goal. My writing friends scraped me up off of the floor and I continued to query.

R&R Agent 7 - Feb 2022

Agent 7 was one of my Sept 2021 #Pitmad requests and hadn’t read yet, so I sent her Agent 6’s revision. She said she was already fifty pages into reading the previous version, and agreed that it needed tightening (so was glad I did the massive edit revision) but was also finding herself wanting more interiority. She said she would love to see a revision with more of what the characters were thinking and feeling.

This was of course after I had already added tens of thousands of words of interiority, and here I was getting that same feedback. So Matty’s (Matthew Lin) advice echoed through my head - that if I switched to first person present, the interiority would flow naturally. And he’d gently suggested it again at least two more times since. And Agent 2 had suggested I split it into a duology so that I would have room for all this interiority that was lacking. So I launched into the third revision, aka THE MASSIVE REVISION. I would chop the novel in half, and switch it to first person present, creating a new first novel with (hopefully) more interiority. And I let Agent 2 know that I was doing her revision. I considered it a joint one, for R&R Agent 2, for R&R Agent 7, and for Matty ;) I contacted agents who still had my partial/full AND agents who had already rejected my partial/full, and told them what I was planning. All of the agents with my partial/full agreed to wait for the new revision, and all of the agents but two who had rejected my partial/full in the past agreed to have a second look. I guess this is a good place to add that none of the R&Rs I received were exclusive. This third revision took five months. The switch to first person present effortlessly added 33k words of interiority to the new first half/novel. I did it at a far more relaxed pace, and I was concurrently revising my MG novel BUBBLES & BONES. A side note that I began to pitch my MG at the start of the Summer, but I was liking the results of switching my YA novel to first person present, and decided to switch it as well, so I didn’t end up sending it out until September 2022. At the end of July 2022, the third revision was ready and I sent it out to A LOT OF AGENTS. The timing wasn’t the greatest. It was right when many agents, including Agent 7, were reading #Pitchwars fulls. R&R Agent 7 rejected in August citing the multiple PoV, and some worldbuilding elements.

This one also crushed me and I cried a ton. I was so tired. Querying is emotionally exhausting. So much rejection.

R&R Agent 8 - Aug 2022 R&R Agent 8 was a #Pitmad Sept 2021 request. By the time she requested, a partial and then a full, revision 3 (the MASSIVE REVISION) was ready so that’s the version she read. The one that had already been expanded, then cut by 20%, then split into a duology and switched to first person present. She sent me a lovely long email that communicated that she truly loved my novel and understood my characters. She had some specific suggestions and hoped I would be willing to revise and resubmit. I wrote to her and was super frank. I told her it was my eighth R&R and asked if it would be okay if I sent her an outline of my planned changes because it might break me if I did another revision that ended with the agent saying they weren’t connecting. She was very amenable to that idea and I sent her a nerdy outline of exactly how I would address each of the points she brought up. Readers, this fourth revision took me one week. The notes involved deepening a character arc, adding more affection to a relationship, and re-adding scenes I had regretfully cut as parts of the first two R&R revisions. It added back a lot of heart to the novel. I sent it back three weeks later. Each of the R&Rs I completed strengthened my novel and I am grateful for all of them :)

MEANWHILE An agent requested after #Latinxpitch 2022 and got the fourth revision I had recently completed for R&R Agent 8. I wasn’t sure if I was going to even pitch it as I had started to pitch my MG novel BUBBLES & BONES and was starting to lose hope for my YA novel, even though I still had 30+ fulls out. There had just been so much rejection. Ten days later I got an email from that agent, who became my Offering Agent - “I am incredibly excited about your work and would love to offer you representation.” I always thought I would scream and run around like people were always saying they do when they get an offer, but my hubby was working in his home office at the top of the stairs where I could have called up, and I wasn’t sure if he was on a call, so I just sat there and stared at my monitor a while longer. Then I walked upstairs and told him, and as my dear friend Callie would say, it was happy :) I was especially thrilled that it was my YA that got the offer. I had worked so hard on it, and it was the book of my heart, with so much of my culture and personal experience tied into it.

My call with the original Offering Agent was amazing. I gushed to my writer friends that I LOVED HER and told her I would let her know my decision by Oct 17th.

And then things got REALLY complicated. Because I had been cold querying my MG BUBBLES & BONES for a month, on top of the pitch likes over the summer, and it had already racked up several requests of its own (it ended up with a 45% request rate as well). I notified 88 agents (it took three days) that had my query or a partial/full of either novel, and additional requests began to pour in. Those with queries/partials/fulls wanted to read either the YA, the MG, or both. R&R Agent 2 sent me the most lovely rejection I've ever gotten and said it would have been a second R&R for her (the ninth in total). R&R Agent 8 (the last one) and R&R Agent 4 (who was having a third look at my YA when the offer came in) both asked for calls on which they offered. Then a fourth agent who had been a #sffpit 2022 pitch like for my MG asked for a call, and offered on my MG novel BUBBLES & BONES a few days later. Lastly, a fifth agent asked for a call, but was unable to make a decision in time for my deadline so I’m considering her a ½ offer because I’m optimistic like that :) All five of the agents are TRULY LOVELY and were excited about my work and it was such a hard decision. I’ll never forget any of my offering agents, especially the one who pulled me out of the slush pile. You’ll always have an extra special place in my writer heart. There were days of agonizing over my choice with writer friends, and in the end one passed along advice someone had given to her. When I imagined myself announcing, whose name popped into my head first?

It was a decision from my gut, and it was R&R Agent 8 - Samantha Wekstein at Thompson Literary Agency. THE EMAIL I SENT Subject: Yes please I would like you to be my agent :) I spent a ridiculous amount of time plotting my subject line. Maybe one day I'll share what my other potential options were, haha.

Thank you for believing in my book and my work. It means *so* much. I am very excited to collaborate with you, and am grateful we did that little R&R together because it allowed me to get a glimpse of your editorial style. I love that you enjoy brainstorming, and your ideas to improve the manuscript really resonated with me. I feel confident my book will be in safe hands and that you will do all in your power to get it out into the world.

I'm excited to discuss next steps :) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you especially to my hubby, a constant support, and my friend April who read my first novel multiple times, as well as my second novel. And, much like my hubby, helped me workshop things over many long walks :) A special shout out to Andrea, who completely took me under her wing when I was a baby writer and taught me SO much about querying and publishing, and has been such a support throughout the entire process.

I think half of the #WritingCommunity has read at least a chapter of one or both of my novels, or more. Thank you thank you thank you! A particular shout out to those who gave extraordinary levels of feedback and/or read multiple novels or the same novel multiple times. In no particular order thank you especially to Matty, Esther, Percy, Heidi, Kristen Cortner, Christa, Jay, A.C., Jessica A, Jessica R, Abigail, & Samantha. And to the authors who encouraged me along the way, to include R. Lee Fryar, Rebecca Thorne, David Bowles, Rubén Degollado, and Ellen Klages.

For emotional support while querying (and lots of reading!), thank you especially to these writing groups - Pitch’n’Bitch (every single last one of you), Let's Get Published, GP, CMG, Team Cactus, and the Latinx Writing Community across FB, Discord, and Twitter. There are so many amazing writers within all these groups that I can’t possibly name them all, but special shout outs to those who have additionally been particular supports in my DMs (to include many of those listed further up) - Jaimie, Lula, Yvi, Maya Darjani, Stephanie, Lauren T Davila, Andrea, Lorraen, Ellen, Juli, & Chloe.

Thank you for reading <3 Please sign up for my newsletter at the bottom of my webpage, if you’d like :D

Laura Galán-Wells

For emotional support while querying (and lots of reading!), thank you especially to these writing groups - Pitch’n’Bitch (every single last one of you), Let's Get Published, GP, CMG, Team Cactus, and the Latinx Writing Community across FB, Discord, and Twitter. There are so many amazing writers within all these groups that I can’t possibly name them all, but special shout outs to those who have additionally been particular supports in my DMs (to include many of those listed further up) - Jaimie, Lula, Yvi, Maya Darjani, Stephanie, Lauren T Davila, Andrea, Lorraen, Ellen, Juli, & Chloe.

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