SavageTimes

Last week, I sent the first ten pages of REUNION AT LAKE WHISPER off to Agent #2.

Today, I sent off the entire manuscript to her, per her request.

Just so you understand: preparing to send off REUNION AT LAKE WHISPER is no easy task for me.  It doesn’t matter if I have all the pieces: synopsis, completed manuscript or requested section, cover letter. I have to go over and over all the pieces, in a certain order, so many times a day, before I can actually put it in the mail slot or hit the “SEND” button.  It’s very similar to how my daughter used to organize shoes when she was younger, when I wondered if she was heading into OCD issues.  As it has turned out, I think she’s simply artistic, and perhaps she felt the only media available to her at the time were the family shoes. Now she is allowed reams of tape and boxes and markers and clay, she creates “found” sculptures and collages or shoebox dioramas with the same zeal she used to organize shoes.

I’d like to say my need to check and re-check is a similar creative eccentricity, but it really isn’t: I know it has more to do with my issues of control, of letting the universe do what it will with my words.

So while I obsess and analyze every sentence of my book and any cover letters or synopses I write, I pick the people I send it to—and share it with—much less analytically.

I blogged about the first agent I sent the book to, and how I came about sending it to her. At least I’d spoken to her….This agent—I heard her talk at the same conference where I met the first one last summer. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to her, and my request for a one-on-one with her was rejected (nothing personal; I’m not sure how they schedule these appointments, but it’s not as if she had any of my work to go off of; it was probably first come, first serve).

However, I liked what she had to say, how she said it. I liked her smile, and I liked her outfit. She reminded me of my cousin, who was my best friend when we were growing up. Plus, she lives in San Francisco, and I love San Francisco.  If I didn’t live where I did, I would live in San Francisco.

Honestly, if I hadn’t met that first agent, I would have sent to this one, first.

She does work with authors in my genre, so I’m not a complete crazy.  But I admit to rolling completely with my instincts here. Watching her up at the table with the other agents and editors, listening to her talk about what she looks for, catching her sense of humor, I felt strongly that she would like my book and its main character.

I tried to stalk her, as I stalked the first agent, but she slipped away from me too many times.  Intentionally or not, I only respected her for it. She was like a Ninja agent, slipping in and out of crowds, there one minute gone the next.  And who wouldn’t want a Ninja for an agent?

Especially one who lives in San Francisco…

I finally managed to hit the SEND button this morning after obsessing and re-obsessing over the email and its precious attachments for probably an hour. My husband played Pokémon while I went through my rituals and watched me out of the corner of his eye with an amused smile on his face.

My novel is in her hands now. Cross your fingers for me.