…and the cycle begins again in my search for a literary agent.  For those of you just joining the saga of my trying to get my novel published, here is a quick primer:

1. I wrote a novel.
2. I found an agent interested in representing my book and we signed a contract.
3. The agent (hereafter referred to as The Evil Agent – or TEA for short) turned out to be a putz.
4. I wasted seven months last year while TEA strung me along, promising to move my novel forward but actually doing absolutely nothing.
5. I fired TEA.  https://laurakilmartin.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/
6. I had to wait an additional thirty days for our contract to run out during which time I grew mildly bitter and despondent.

That brings us to the magical date of January 4th when my search for a new agent began.

I spent a night last week researching new agents and sent out four query letters.  For those of you who don’t know the process someone has to go through to find an agent, you first have to find a list of agents that represent the type of genre you’ve written.  Then, you should research each agent to find authors they represent, their success rate, etc…  Then you write “query letters” explaining who you are, what your novel is about and tailor each letter to the specific agent by explaining where your book fits within the list of authors that person already represents. 

It can take an agent as much as 6-8 weeks to review a query letter and a whopping 90% of the time you should expect to receive a rejection.  In the glorious remaining 10% of the time, an agent may ask to see more material – perhaps a sample chapter or the entire manuscript.  It then takes another 4-8 weeks to review.  Again, statistically most of those reviews are met with rejections, but the one thought that keeps an unpublished writer from going completley batshit crazy is the fact that it only takes one agent to find one publisher.

So, maybe I should really thank old TEA for giving me almost a year reprieve from this un-fun process. 

That said, with enough hard work and a sprinkle of luck I fully expect that some day I will find an agent, my book will be published, and it will be turned into a movie starring Jensen Ackles.

For those who don’t know who Jensen Ackles is, and because I love to leave my blogs on a happy note…