Pitch Contest Success Story

I love when paying it forward pays big. So when I got a message from Caitlin Whitaker telling me she got her agent through one of my contests, I had to let out a major squee.

Here's her story:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now represented by the fantabulous Ms. Bree Ogden of D4EO Literary Agency.

First, some numbers. I sent out a grand total of 37 queries, never heard back on 14 of them, was rejected 12 times, and had 15 submission requests. I know the numbers don't add up. Some of my submission requests were from contests so there wasn't an official query involved.

Bree was one of my non-query submissions.

I started querying at the end of July and the very first one I sent was answered with a request for my full manuscript. Over the next few weeks, I sent out two and three queries at a time and entered contests to distract myself from obsessing over my submissions.

The first contest I entered was Dorothy Dreyer's 3-2-1 Pitch Contest; three sentences, two days to enter, one agent judging the entries. The agent judging the August 3-2-1 Pitch Contest was Bree Ogden, who is ridiculously awesome on so many levels. I was pretty darn sure I wouldn't win but I loved the idea of whittling my pitch down to three little sentences so I went for it. I labeled it New Adult because the option was there. It's a tricky issue for me because my MC is a little older but the MS feels very YA. I've had mixed messages from agents on this one so I thought it was safer calling it NA than risking the old "Maggie's too old for YA" response. I spent maybe fifteen minutes condensing my query down to this;

"Maggie inherited a lot from her grandma-- her brown eyes, her sense of humor, and her cause of death. Unaware she's starting the countdown to a reenactment of her grandma's death by fire, Maggie spends the summer with her hot-as-hell boyfriend and accidentally sets off an unstable stalker.

It's only a matter of time before Maggie Parrish is going to burn."

And then I waited. Six days later, I wasn't the winner. I assumed Bree wasn't interested. (WRONG)

A bizarre email showed up in my inbox early the week after. Someone claiming to be Bree's executive assistant requested my first fifty pages and synopsis, saying Bree had instructed her to do so following the 3-2-1 Pitch Contest. Instead of her email address ending in @D4EO.com, it was (redacted).D4EO@gmail.com. Her first name was EXACTLY THE SAME as mine. Think hard-- how many Caitlins do you know? Not Katelyns or Caitlynns, but Caitlins. No one knew how to pronounce my name when I was little. Every substitute teacher called me Cat Lynn. I hated it. But I digress.

Because I'm such a confident, secure person, I assumed the almighty Bree-Freaking-Ogden was way out of my league and the email was a scam. This psycho "Caitlin" chick swiped my email address off the contest entry and wanted to steal my baby. Bree, with her red lipstick fetish and love of things dark and wonderful, would never be interested in some loser stay-at-home mom with a minivan and a Diet Cherry Coke addiction.

I did what any sane person would do. I called Bree's executive assistant a manuscript-napping fraud and said she needed to get smacked around. Then I got this email;

"Ha ha! Yes, she is my assistant. And yes, I told her to request fifty pages. Thanks for checking!"

So I apologized to Caitlin for calling her a scam artist and accusing her of trying to hijack my story. I made such a splendid first impression, I figured I'd slaughtered any chance I had of landing Bree.

A bunch of other stuff happened. (I just saved you half an hour. You're welcome.)

All of a sudden, I had offers. It was an overnight thing and I'm still in shock. I wrote a bunch of "thank you for considering my MS, blah blah blah" emails and sent them to the agents who hadn't answered my query yet. To the agents who'd made submission requests, I gave them a heads up about my offers and got emails back, asking for a week to finish reviewing my MS. Bree was one of them.

Bree's offer was preceded by a middle of the night email, confessing she was (and I quote) "falling madly in love" with my manuscript. She sent an email the next day, asking if we could chat on the phone because she had an offer for me. I locked myself in my room and The Gunny hung out with the kids so I could have a semblance of privacy. We talked on the phone and she was every bit as jaw-droppingly cool as she seemed online. (Her hair changes color! Pink! Blue! Green!)

I have to add here how awesome my other offers were. This wasn't an easy decision. I didn't query every agent known to man-- just agents I really wanted to work with. Getting an agent is more than signing a contract. It's agreeing to a sort of partnership. It's finding someone who genuinely loves you and your work and will rave about you to publishers and fight for your manuscript's life. It's not something I took lightly when I sent queries. I think having this attitude made rejections easier for me. When I got a rejection that praised my writing but said they just didn't love it the way they needed to in order to represent me, I was cool with that. I was looking for love and I found it.

Congratulations, Caitlin! I'm so happy for you! I look forward to news of a book deal!