A Tale of Two Writers–and Lessons for Us All

This week saw the publication of Dan Krokos‘s much-anticipated debut novel, FALSE MEMORY (click here for the Goodreads summary). In light of this, I thought I’d take the opportunity to consider Dan’s unusual road to publication, and also that of his fellow Janet Reid client, Gary Corby. I think they both represent how non-linear the path to getting an agent and a book deal often is, and hopefully this will encourage all of us in our own writing journey.

Dan’s literary story starts with a submission to Janet Reid’s Query Shark site. Here’s his query, as read on this BBC World Service interview with Janet:

Ford Kelly spends his days driving an ambulance, and his nights driving a getaway car for his uncle, the contract killer. But when his uncle dies mid-contract, Ford has two choices: also die, or convince his new employers he knows more about taking lives than saving them. The contract: snuff out a ring of dirty cops who demand hush money after stumbling across a new drug being prepared for the street. The problem: the last cop on the list is Ford’s wife, who left him after the death of their son a year ago. That’s when Ford discovers how good at killing he really is.

Janet says she signed him 20 seconds after reading this. However, if you read Goodreads, you’ll notice this isn’t FALSE MEMORY (though it sounds like an awesome book). And Janet said three major publishers were interested in the book he initially queried. What happened?

Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe Dan will share somewhere, but if I might engage in some semi-educated guesswork, somewhere along the way, Dan and Janet concluded that this novel was not ready. Either the initial interest didn’t pan out, they couldn’t agree with publishers on editorial changes, the market wasn’t ready–there are a billion-and-one reasons why the book that got you an agent may not end up being your first novel. It happens a lot, it seems.

What I think is really interesting, though, is that while the query that provoked Janet to offer representation is for a genre she represents (crime/thriller), FALSE MEMORY is a YA novel, and YA is not one of Janet’s areas of expertize. But, like most good agents, Janet doesn’t represent books so much as authors. She clearly loved Dan’s work enough to continue representing him for a book that’s outside her normal parameters. She did call on YA agent Suzie Townsend, now with New Leaf Literary & Media, for help, but the point is Dan didn’t lose his agent because his next book was one she might not have taken had he queried it. Clearly, she signed Dan because she believes in him as a writer, not because he will always write her genre. And from what I’ve read, this is not uncommon among good agents.

Gary’s story is told by Janet on her blog, and by Gary in the acknowledgements pages of THE PERICLES COMMISSION. Briefly, Gary queried his novel to Janet. Janet loved it and sent a request for pages. But her email bounced. The writer’s worst nightmare, yes? But Janet really wanted to read those pages, so she posted a plea on her blog for Gary to contact her, hoping he might be following her site. In fact, Janet’s blog readers came to the rescue: they managed to chase Gary down (in Australia) and provide Janet with his contact information. It seems the provider Gary uses for his website and email switched host servers, causing a disruption to his email service. But the point here is that Gary’s query was so good, Janet was willing to exert energy to find him and get more pages. The rest of the story is history: Janet signed him, and soon after (well, relatively soon–we’re talking about publishing here, remember!) Gary’s first novel was published.

So, the lesson from Gary: make sure your query is so good, an agent would do anything short of calling the FBI to find you and get pages from you. And we should be encouraged to know that while we need to follow guidelines and rules (like having a working email account), in the end, it’s the writing–the novel–that matters most to an agent.

I hope these stories give you hope as you pursue your publication goals. And congratulations to Dan! May you have a long and successful career.