How I got my literary agent

Or how I survived querying and running my biotech startup at the same time

I’m officially an agented author! Can’t believe I get to say that. I signed with the incredibly brilliant and fierce Keir Alekseii of Azantian Literary Agency.

It’s 2024 so everything is an e-signature these days which is admittedly less fun, but no less ~official~. Read to the end to see my real reaction to this news. And yes, that is a Christmas tree in February.

If you are a book person, you know that when a debut author gets an agent, they usually make a post about their journey to get there. If you’re not, now you know and can pretend to be a book person to impress your friends. /s But for real, this is going to be a long post because I haven’t posted in over a year so it’s also an update on what’s been going on in my life during that time.

The book I signed with is a Young Adult science fantasy novel about Erois, a transracial adoptee and burnt-out gifted kid, who receives a mysterious letter stating she has a long-lost sister who's gone missing and in grave danger. Erois risks everything to cross the dangerous desertsea (a literal ocean of sand) in search of family and what it means to belong. It has all my favorite themes including navigating intersectional identities, finding light in the darkness, and the power of ~friendship~.

This post will be broken into a few sections:

1. How I started my book and creative writing in general

2. What the actual writing process was like

3. Being in the querying trenches

4. Officially signing with my agent and my stats

How I started my book and creative writing in general

My journey is a bit cliché in the sense that I started writing during the pandemic. The stress of being in the middle of 1) a global pandemic, 2) my third year of graduate school, and 3) the apocalyptic California wild fires was making me desperate (read: depressed) and in need of some escapism. As a kid, fantasy and sci-fi were my favorite genres, and I’ve written before about my love of the imagination and creativity of animated media.  

I have a journal entry dated 7/21/2020 when I was trying to figure out what to do with the creative energy that was pent up with nowhere to go:

“Who would I write a story for?

1. Myself, first and foremost. I feel like I’ve wanted to write a story for a long, long time and could never figure out how. I still struggle with this, but want to figure out how to scratch this itch and share stories with the rest of the world. I am so moved by stories and I want to touch people’s lives in that way too.

2. I think I want to write a story for the adopted kids and the experience of not knowing where you’re from or who you are. The feeling when there isn’t a mold for you and the ones you’ve been placed in weren’t made for you. I want to capture the feeling and helplessness of not being enough no matter what you do and being lost in between two different worlds that don’t fully accept you.

3. For the kids who felt like they didn’t belong –the ones always on the outside looking in and wearing a mask to convince both the world and themself, that they’re okay.

So, who I’m writing this for kind of touches upon the internal themes, but I still truly have no idea what the external themes would be.

I do love sci-fi novels about magic, space, friendship, and survival though.”

It’s really cool to look back on this entry from nearly four years ago because…I did that. I really did write a story for myself, adopted kids, and those who felt like they didn’t belong. And those “internal themes” eventually went on to inspire the “external themes” -- the setting, magic system, and overall plot of the book. More on my writing process at a different time, but this did end up being a fantasy book with sci-fi elements, magic, friendship, and survival with the world at stake. It’s not often that I feel proud of myself, but right now, I do.

What the actual writing process was like

So, I had the time. I had the motivation. The main thing I was missing was the structure and discipline to actually do the thing. I think this is the hardest part and where most people fail to go out to do the thing even though they have the best of intentions and a killer idea. It was around this time in 2020 that Erica, one of my closest friends in grad school, had just finished writing her first book. She started in high school and it had taken her ten years, but she had done it. I thought that was the coolest thing. Not only was she getting her PhD, but she was also writing books. I decided that if my friend could do it, I had no excuse. I could do it too. Erica and I decided to start a little writing group where we would exchange work each week to talk about the stories we were creating. Not only is Erica an incredible writer, she’s also an amazing critique partner and has gotten me out of more plot holes and writers block than I can count. I attribute 90% of why my book came together to Erica. Without her, I would have never maintained the motivation to keep going week after week. I really needed the consistent feedback and positive motivation of someone reacting to what I had created in real time. Especially in the early days, opening up those word docs and reading the comments Erica had left for me was nothing short of the high I imagine people get from cocaine. I’m not joking. It was an incredible rush to create something -- a world, characters, a twisty, twisty plot -- and have someone else gush over them as much as I was. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that kind of joy while writing ever again, but even if I don’t that’s alright. It’s a special time in my life that I cherish very much.

Erica and I in hats I bought for us that just so happened to capture the vibe of the books we were writing at the time. Mine says “Astral Projection Club” and Erica’s says “Paranormal Investigator.”

That first draft of my book, now tentatively titled The Great Divide, took six months to write. I wrote about a chapter (sometimes two) every week. Looking back, I have no idea how I wrote that much given I was also finishing up my PhD thesis at Stanford and starting my biotech company at the same time.

After the first draft, I took a break for a month and had a round of beta readers give comments. That was not nearly long enough for a break, but I wanted my book ready in time to apply to Pitch Wars and Author Mentor Match – two volunteer-run competitions, where aspiring authors pitch their books to published authors who act as mentors for navigating the murky world of publishing.

Long story short, I did not get picked for Pitch Wars (no full requests either). I was crushed. My first rejection. Boohoo. Little me was not ready for how much more rejection was on the horizon (spoiler, a lot).

After Pitch Wars I took a proper break from writing. I was burnt out, sick of my book, and extremely stressed from my day job of running a biotech startup. This was the true break I needed and I didn’t look at my manuscript again for another three months until submitting to Author Mentor Match.

AMM changed everything. In one of the happiest accomplishments of my life, Wen-Yi Lee chose my book from AMM! Fun fact: I was Wen’s very last submission and also almost the last submission of the whole application because I submitted a few minutes before midnight (I know I wasn’t the last though, because Erica submitted just after me :D lol).

If Erica was 90% of the reason my first draft came together, Wen was 90% of the reason I was able to get an agent. The thing I have just come to accept by now is that Wen is a child prodigy and almost always knows best. The first time we chatted over zoom I learned more about storytelling and craft in a single sentence than I had in months of reading blog posts. It’s because of Wen my story is split into two POVs and has such a compelling relationship at its core.

One of my favorite pieces of storytelling craft I’ve learned from Wen is how to think about relationships (romantic or platonic, but in this case focusing on romantic). Romance between two characters isn’t just who would be fun to pair off with who, but about what each of those characters offers the other. It isn’t enough to have on-page chemistry — a compelling romance between two characters means they cannot grow, arc, or develop the story without each other. They teach each other things no one else in the book can. Without this relationship, the bad guys would win, the good guys wouldn’t reach their full potential, and the world would end (I paraphrased here and added drama).

It’s such good advice and has changed everything about the way I approach writing and character development.

That being said, the editing process with Wen was intense. For one, Wen reads and offers editorial suggestions faster than anyone I have ever met. For two, she does not hold back on the feedback. I wrote in my AMM application that “I would love someone to tear my book apart so I can pick up the pieces.” Be careful what you wish for folks, because I went through the meat grinder on this one. The following draft was a nearly full rewrite with about 80% completely new content, but about ~10k less words.

Even though it was one of the most grueling things I’ve ever done, I did truly love every minute of the editing process with Wen. Even the times I was groaning at my desk and proclaiming loudly that I absolutely could not do this anymore and I was going to give up (my partner is very confused why this is my hobby of choice), I wouldn’t have it any other way. The Great Divide is 4-5x better because of Wen, and the fact that she believed in me and my characters – who they were and who they could be – means the world to me.

Wen and I when she visited the states for her fancy Clarion West writing fellowship.

Being in the querying trenches

Oh, the querying trenches. The dreaded stage of purgatory in the publishing world. If you’re unfamiliar, people who write books and want to be traditionally published (i.e. not self-published) need to get a literary agent who then goes and attempts to sell the book to an editor/publishing agency.

Most people are surprised by this but A LOT of people write books. Much more than you think. Most agents can receive more than 2,000 queries a year, and from those take on around 6 new clients. People query more than one agent at a time though, so roughly ~1% of authors get an agent. Of those, around 50-70% go on to get a book deal from a publisher.

I sent my first query October 5th, 2022 and expected to send about 15-20 a week with a goal of sending ~60 total. I sent 20 in six months. I am a very, very slow querier. In addition to spending a lot of time personalizing each query, I also get decision paralysis over details I shouldn’t (i.e. Should I send the prologue as part of the first 10 pages or not? Should I prioritize sending to agents who respond faster? Should I send to newer or more established agents if they’re in the same agency? etc.)

These are normal querying woes, but what made my querying experience especially difficult (read: horrific) was needing to raise money for my biotech startup at the same time. Startups and writing books might seem very different but in reality, they have strikingly similar processes. Specifically, both fundraising and querying are infamously painful because they require 1) a lot of waiting and 2) a lot of rejection.

In the past couple of years a lot of people have, jokingly and not, described me as a “girl boss,” which does make me laugh. Sure, it sounds cool to run your own company and also write books, but the reality of the situation is receiving rejection for two different things you put your entire self into.

By this time, it was mid-2023 and deal flow in my sector of biotech was down 90% compared to the previous year. On any given day I would pitch my company 3-4 times a day and receive rejections from investors in-between those meetings. I couldn’t let it bother me though because we had to keep pushing if we were going to survive. I refrained from showing my stress at work because raising money is my responsibility and as co-founder and CEO, the team looks to me for emotional cues. I know this and accept it willingly, but the weight of people’s salaries and visas all depending on me and things largely outside of my control is extremely wearing. On top to this, I was getting an encouraging number of full requests for my book (a good sign an agent wants to keep reading), but no one was ready to commit. Every full request would give me a bubble of hope and I would day dream about getting an agent, but the rejection 3-6 months later would leave me feeling crushed. And like a typical millennial, I turned to doomscrolling on Twitter and was met with endless posts of people successfully raising money and successfully securing agents and book deals.

If you can’t tell, this girl boss was doing really, really gooOo0oOo0Oood. There was one particular week I received seven rejections in three days and decided that even I had a limit to the amount of masochism I could endure in my eternal search for self-growth^TM. After about six months in, I took a break from actively sending out queries to focus all my attention and energy on keeping my company afloat in the economic and biotech wasteland that was 2022-2023.

I am proud to say that my company was able to raise a successful round of funding at the end of 2023 and we have since continued to grow and produce science I am insanely proud of.

What all of this meant for querying is I forced it to live in a part of my brain that I visited a few times a week, but didn’t allow myself to dwell on. After that initial batch of ~20 queries, I trickled a few more out here and there, but it was largely on the back burner until I was in a place to meaningfully focus on it again. Yes, I was slow to query because I obsess over small details and was busy with work, but it was also out of self-protection. I told myself that as long as I still had more than half my list to go, I wasn’t out of the game. The right person hadn’t read it yet because I didn’t have the time to send many out.

During this time I was still writing. Mostly my new WIP, an adult sci-fi novel about the lengths graduate students will go for success and how they lose (and re-find) themselves in the process. You can read more about it here. I think having a new project was the most helpful distraction for surviving the querying process. Having a new story and new characters to be excited about was an active way for me to improve my chances of getting an agent. I figured if I didn’t get an agent from my first book, I would try again with the second.

Sidenote, I thought writing one book would make writing the second one significantly easier. Tragically, it does not.

If you’re querying right now, just know it feels hard because it is hard. Everyone’s journey is different and it’s not helpful nor productive to rush things. I put so much artificial time pressure on myself to get things out quickly and realize now I didn’t need to do that. I could have been more gentle with myself given life is always going to happen and my book wasn’t going anywhere. Your characters are always going to be there, waiting for you.

Officially signing with my agent and my stats

Because of the title of this post, you know things turned around eventually. My long-winded, dark-night-of-the-soul querying journey came to an end January 19, 2024. Remember that query I sent October 5th, 2022 — the very first one? Yep, that was Keir. 138 days queried before 337 days with my full. Keep the faith, y’all!!! Everything worked out and that year ended up being an extremely important time for me to grow with my company. After the initial offer email from Keir, I sent off about 10 more queries, received two more full requests (one rejection, and one who never got back to me).

My offer call with Keir was so, so fun. I had accepted The Great Divide wasn’t going to make it out of the trenches, so being able to gush about the characters I loved and didn’t think would see the light of day was really special. Keir immediately saw into the heart of The Great Divide and shared the character’s fears, hopes, and joys. She also strikes that perfect balance of being super fun to talk to, while being an extremely accomplished business professional. She has a strong editorial vision for making The Great Divide accessible to a broader audience and a great marketing angle to potential publishers. I am unbelievably excited to be represented by her and for the next steps in the publishing journey we take together.

My offer meeting with Keir! Cue the warm and fuzzies.

If you made it this far, phew! Thanks for reading! Here are my stats, which are probably what everyone wanted to see to begin with.

34 queries sent
9 full requests (27%)
1 offer of representation (3%)
4 times I was found face down, groaning into the carpet
3 celebratory dance sessions after getting an email from Keir

Woooohooooo!!!!

My unfiltered reaction to signing my agent agreement!!