I Got a Publishing Deal! Here's How. (Part One.)
Spoiler alert: I was rejected over 150 times before I got the "yes" I was looking for.
I can finally share the news! The Barefoot Followers of Sweet Potato Grace will be on bookshelves in 2025! I have signed a deal with Lanternfish Press and I couldn’t be more excited to share Pinky Swear’s journey with readers. This book is full of joy, silliness, sassiness, and a lot of love for cats. And being that this book is my debut novel, I feel an extra jolt of excitement every time I think about it. This huge dream of mine is finally becoming a reality.
I have wanted to be a writer my whole life. And while I have been making a living as a writer since 2016, I was never fully confident that I would get a fiction book on the shelves. Now, I’m confident that I needed my gut to tell me it was time to take this dream seriously. I also trusted my gut when it told me to go to Kansas City, which is ultimately how I ended up with a publishing deal. More on that later.
Here’s the first part of my publishing journey. Warning! This part contains a lot of rejection. And that’s because my publishing journey didn’t start with The Barefoot Followers of Sweet Potato Grace.
2020
In the midst of the pandemic, when international travel was reckless and the future was uncertain, I set a goal. I would write a book. I had technically written a book, as my career as a ghostwriter was just kicking off during this time. But I wanted to write a fiction book with my name on the cover. And one day, I would publish that book.
I wrote a manuscript titled The Hesitation Tango, in which a woman receives a random invitation to go to Buenos Aires with her wacky mother and, as she discovers at the airport, her ex-girlfriend. I loved writing this book. It’s sweet. It’s funny. I hadn’t felt confident about sharing my fiction writing with family until I wrote this manuscript. I was oh so sure I would have an advance in my bank account soon after I started querying and I was confident I would get a book deal by 2022.
HA!
2022
I sent the book off to 100 agents, and…
No one was interested.
Querying can be disheartening. If you do hear back from an agent (which is not always guaranteed) and they reject you, they will likely send a “form rejection” saying they weren’t hooked in the first few pages, but to continue querying because publishing is a subjective industry. These things are all true, even if they are being said to you and hundreds of other authors through a copied and pasted rejection. Once you query enough agents, seeing a “personalized rejection” is actually quite encouraging.
(I know, right? It’s rough out there.)
No one wanted to sign me. Three agents asked to “see pages”, aka read the first 50 pages or the full manuscript, but those requests turned into rejection. Still, as I learned how selective this process is, I ended up seeing those “fulls” and “partial” as wins.
Who Requested Fulls/Partials?
None of the agents I queried through QueryTracker or cold emails asked for pages. Instead, I met three agents who requested pages by…
“Attending” a pitch event on Twitter (You know I still call it Twitter!)
Attending a Writing Day Workshop and paying extra to pitch directly to agents
Looking back, I know my query letter was not good. I wasn’t “selling” my manuscript appropriately, but by talking about the manuscript over Zoom or a succinct tweet, I was probably able to better convey the story to agents. If you are querying, I highly recommend looking into any and all opportunities to reach out to agents. But I also recommend doing a lot of work on your query letter before sending it.
This Obviously Wasn’t the End of My Querying Journey
When I started querying, I thought that 100 rejections would break me. I imagined myself in the pits of despair, facing a crossroads and choosing to never write another word again.
By the time I decided to shelve The Hesitation Tango at the beginning of 2023, I was too distracted by all that I was learning to feel sorry for myself. I soaked up any and all information I could find about querying, publishing, writing, editing, and how to have a successful career as a fiction author.
Here are some of the resources I used during that time:
Reddit’s PubTips Subreddit
Resources and workshops through the Writers’ League of Texas
(None of the links above are affiliate links. I just wanted to share what I used!)
If I saw a free webinar, I signed up for it. If a class was affordable, I took it. There is so much free and affordable information out there about querying and publishing. Take advantage of it!
Also 2022
As the rejections rolled in, I started writing a new book. I’ll admit that the year 2022 was one of the worst of my life. It kicked off with the death of my cat, Sweet Potato Grace, and didn’t improve. I channeled my grief into writing a lighthearted manuscript.
The creation of Pinky Swear as a character cheered me up. The first scene I wrote—a van of hippies interrupting a public cat memorial—brought me joy. What started as The Fourth of July Goat Cheese Memorial for Sweet Potato Grace quickly evolved into the book it is now: a story about family, identity, boundaries…and time travel.
January 2023
My New Year’s Resolution for 2023 was to join a writing group, so I joined the Austin Creative Fiction Writers Group.
Critiques from this group wildly transformed the first few chapters of my book, and I met a writer in this group who ended up giving me phenomenal advice on my query letter in exchange for a beer. If you are a writer, join a writing group. I found mine through a quick Google search and a little bit of patience.
October 2023
As I continued polishing the book and my query letter, I attended more webinars and workshops. Somehow, somewhere I heard about AWP: the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Someone mentioned how big their conference was, and the next morning, I signed up to volunteer (saving me $250!) and bought a flight to Kansas City.
I asked myself, “Am I losing it?” for spending more money than I would have liked to on the hotel across the street from the conference. The last time I followed my gut like this, I ended up booking an eight-day hike around Torres Del Paine in Chile. It was the same gut feeling that told me, “This is not something you knew about two days ago, but now it’s something you have to do.”
Whenever I have that feeling in my gut, I listen to it. I had to go to Kansas City that March.