Hidden Worlds Books: How I Found An Agent: LOST GIRLS by Merrie Destefano

Monday, 2 January 2017

How I Found An Agent: LOST GIRLS by Merrie Destefano

Lost Girls by Merrie Destefano

Publication Date: January 3, 2017

Publisher: Entangled Teen

Fight Club meets Black Swan—Rachel wakes up in a ditch to find she doesn’t remember the last year of her life, and that everything—including herself—is vastly different than she remembers.

Yesterday, Rachel went to sleep listening to Taylor Swift, curled up in her grammy’s quilt, worrying about geometry. Today, she woke up in a ditch, bloodied, bruised, and missing a year of her life.

She doesn’t recognize the person she’s become: she’s popular. She wears nothing but black.

Black to cover the blood.

And she can fight.

Tell no one.

She’s not the only girl to go missing within the last year…but she’s the only girl to come back. She desperately wants to unravel what happened to her, to try and recover the rest of the Lost Girls.

But the more she discovers, the more her memories return. And as much as her new life scares her, it calls to her. Seductively. The good girl gone bad, sex, drugs, and raves, and something darker…something she still craves—the rush of the fight, the thrill of the win—something she can’t resist, that might still get her killed…

The only rule is: There are no rules.

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Finding the Right Cheerleader for Your Book

By Merrie Destefano

Writing a book is hard. It takes a long time and there seems to be a shortage of the right words; meanwhile, characters misbehave and plots meander. By the time the book is done—really done, edited two or three times until it almost sparkles—it needs to find a home somewhere else. It needs to get out of my computer and find a real home. A publishing home. An editor who will fall in love with it, nurture it, help it grow into a Real Book.

But honestly, I've never had much success by contacting an editor on my own. (Okay, there was that ONE time when I did it by myself and got a three-book deal with a big publisher, but those books never made it all the way to publication. Not my fault, but it's a long story and I digress...) Anyway, to me, the best and only way to go the traditional publishing route is to have an agent to represent me.

Alas, there have been times during this publishing journey when I've found myself all alone, without an agent. It can happen when you switch markets or genres. It can happen if your agent decides to quit being an agent. It can just happen. So, there was this time a few years ago when I had a new manuscript written, but no one to submit it to an editor.

I had to do what every new author does and what every experienced, published author does. I had to research agents and agencies, looking for someone that I thought might like my work enough to represent it. I searched Publisher's Marketplace, I followed agents on Twitter, I read agent interviews and I talked to my published friends about their agents.

In the midst of all this, while I was querying and getting rejections, I asked one of my dear friends, K.C. Alexander (author of Necrotech) about the agency that represented her at that time, the Bradford Literary Agency. I loved that agency and they represented the type of work I write. But then, discouragement set in. I confessed to Kace at a Romance Writers conference that I didn't think I was going to sub to them, even though I really wanted to and even though K.C. had already put in a good word for me and even though they were waiting for my submission.

At that point, I'd gotten so discouraged that I didn't want another rejection.

Enter my favorite mantra: Good friends don't let you quit. Even when you want to. Even when you think curling in a ball and eating chocolate is the best idea you've ever had. So Kace refused to let me quit and told me I had to sub to the agency that repped her. Somehow, she convinced me. Despite my fear and worry and inner-doubt, I listened to the confident voice of my friend.

CURRENTLY A FULL-TIME NOVELIST and magazine editor, Merrie Destefano’s next novel, LOST GIRLS, releases on January 3, 2017. Her other novels include AFTERLIFE and FEAST, both published by HarperCollins, and FATHOM, which was self-published. The editor of Victorian Homes magazine, she has also been the editor of American Farmhouse Style, Vintage Gardens, and Zombies magazine, and was the founding editor of Cottages & Bungalows magazine.

With 20 years experience in publishing, she worked for a variety of publishing/broadcasting companies that include Focus on the Family, The Word For Today, and PJS Publications (now Primedia). Besides editing and writing, her background includes print buying, writing/producing radio promos, directing photo shoots, developing new products, writing jacket copy for books, creating sales media packets and organizing direct mail campaigns.

Born in the Midwest, she currently lives in Southern California with her husband, two German shepherds, a Siamese cat and the occasional wandering possum. Her favorite hobbies are reading speculative fiction and watching old Star Trek episodes, and her incurable addiction is writing. She loves to camp in the mountains, walk on the beach, watch old movies, listen to alternative music—although rarely all at the same time.