Are you an ottist?

Back in college, Pythagoras and I held a number of jobs that had little to do with our future professions.

Mine included working in a bakery and washing dogs for a pet groomer (a combination that resulted in a disturbing number of poodles licking donut frosting off my shoes).

Pythagoras worked in a pizza parlor.

One evening, he answered a call from a man with a heavy accent and a very firm idea how he wanted his pizza made. After he barked his elaborate instructions to Pythagoras, he issued this stern warning:

"I am a pizza ottist, so I will know if you do not make it right."

Pythagoras frowned down at his order pad. "Pizza ottist?"

"Pizza ottist!" the man repeated loudly.

Oh artist, Pythagoras realized, but wrote down o-t-t-i-s-t and committed both the word and the concept to memory.

Since then, it's become our catch-all phrase for a skill that is a great source of pride, but might not ordinarily be considered a form of artistry. I am a bargain-hunting ottist, as I can always find the best prices on everything from world travel to used jeans.

Pythagoras slices the potatoes paper-thin.

And Pythagoras is still a pizza ottist. It's the one thing he loves to do in the kitchen (well, I suppose there are other things he might love to do in the kitchen, but the granite counters are kind of cold).

Just last night, some friends and I pleaded with him to make pizzas. I knew he had a million other things on his to-do list (I know this because I attempted to add my own name) but I also saw that flicker of pride that comes from being asked to do something you're really very good at.

He agreed, and we headed off to the grocery store to stock up on pepperoni and onions and big, fat mushrooms. Pythagoras delighted us with his mouth-watering Italian prosciutto, potato, and rosemary pizza, along with some artery-clogging meat monster we affectionately called "boy pizza."

It was delicious. Even better, it was fun to see my husband basking in the glow of doing something he's very good at and enjoys, but isn't required to do in order to keep a roof over our heads.

Assembling the pizzas.

I'm no psychology expert, but I'm pretty sure everyone needs outlets like this – some skill, some ottistry that isn't tied to your profession, but just makes you happy because you're genuinely good at it. Do you agree? If so, what sort of ottist are you? Is there some ottistry you aspire to develop? Please share!

And please let me know if you happen to be a cleaning ottist. My kitchen looks like someone blew up a bag of flour with an M-80.

Totally worth it though.

My hole got plugged so my jugs aren't full

Before we get started on this fine Monday morning, thank you SO MUCH to everyone who offered blog organization tips in response to Friday's post.

I asked Joelle Anthony, author of RESTORING HARMONY, to choose one lucky commenter to receive the autographed copy of her book. After a complicated selection process that involved calculating the square root of pi and sacrificing several small mammals, Joelle chose blog commenter ~ M (also known as Mary Alongi). Congratulations, Mary! Email me with your address and I'll get the book to you ASAP!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog post.

I traveled to Salem, OR this past weekend to take part in the 20th Annual Grape Stomp Competition at Willamette Valley Vineyards.

Participants compete in pairs with the "stomper" using bare feet to crush grapes, and the "swabber" using a dipstick-like device to keep the drain clear and the juice flowing into the milk jugs.

I stomped. My dad swabbed.

We sucked.

Something went awry with our drain tube, and despite my dad's best efforts, we couldn't get it clear. On top of that, the teenager I asked to take video of the five-minute event manged to record exactly one second of footage of me stepping out of the barrel.

But this is exactly what I wanted. A learning experience.

Though it's possible I'd do this event even if I didn't have an ulterior motive, I do have one. The third book in my contract, LET IT BREATHE, takes place in the Oregon wine industry. Though it won't be released until August 2012, it's never to early to look for interesting promotional opportunities.

I don't know yet if the 2012 Grape Stomp might be a good place for a book signing, or if my time might be better spent lighting my hair on fire and screaming "buy my book!" as I fling grape pulp at the competitors.

But I do know how the event works now. I know that next time, I'll watch the earlier heats to see which barrels have trouble draining. I know I'll spend more time finding someone to take video. I know I'll poke holes in the bottom of the other competitors' jugs so all their juice drains out I'll wear my hair up next time so it stays out of my face.

It's a bit like writing, no? Even if some of your earliest efforts are abysmal failures in terms of publication or feedback, they aren't wasted efforts. You learn from those efforts, and those lessons will serve you well with future books.

What are some learning experiences you've had so far in your writing? Please share.

And speaking of sharing, here are some of the lovely photos my mother took on Saturday. Enjoy!

A plethora of grapes await stomping.

Dad scopes out the barrels before the competition.

A little pre-competition beverage.

Sizing up the competition before the whistle blows.

Stomping...

More stomping...

Wow, this stomping is lasting on a long time.

Yay, team! Oh, wait – we sucked.

My grape stomping machines.

Getting cleaned up afterward.

Standing in line to get our juice strained and measured.

Hanging with my parents!

Help me get my poop together!

As you may know, I'm a Google Analytics fiend and a stalker when it comes to tracking blog stats.

Lately, I'm seeing a lot of first-time blog visitors showing up just to read old posts like You are a real author, dammit! or Query stats or Fake car sex.

I'm not sure how they're finding those posts, but I'm feeling kind of like I do when a bunch of unexpected house guests show up and I'm standing there in spaghetti-stained sweatpants with a pile of dirty dishes on the counter.

I always meant to have an organized system for archiving blog posts so new visitors could find what they're seeking. Like if you want to read posts about critique partners, there'd be an easy way to locate them. Or if you want to read posts about crotch patches or crotch pockets...um, I guess I'd have a separate category labeled "pervert?"

Anyway, I'd love your help getting organized. I'll even make it worth your while.

In the comments trail, please share one or more of the following:

• Are there any blogs you frequent that make it super easy to locate old posts on certain topics? Show me!
  
• For this blog, can you think of topics you'd like to see broken out or specific posts you'd like to see under those headings?
• Can you share any other tips for organizing/archiving blogs? Anything you've seen elsewhere that I should be doing here?
• What topics would you like me to tackle in future blog posts? OK, so this has nothing to do with organization. It's just me being lazy so I have something to blog about on those mornings I'm brain dead.

Answer one or more of these questions in the comments and I will be eternally grateful.

I will also give you a chance to win a fabulous book I just finished reading. I have an autographed copy of Joelle Anthony's terrific debut YA novel RESTORING HARMONY. I loved this book, and so will you. Well, only one of you will get to love this exact book. The rest of you will have to buy your own.

Just to keep things fair, I'm going to let Joelle pick a winner instead of having one of my pets do it this time. If Joelle really wants to fetch balls or swim for sticks, I'm happy to throw them for her.

Oh, and speaking of the amazing Joelle Anthony, she was one of last season's authors over at The Debutante Ball. The Friday blogger, to be specific. Know who's blogging there on Friday's now? (Hint: ME!) Stop by and say hello!

OK, blog readers – take it away! Help me get my poop together.

And thanks!

Hell in a desk basket

The other day, I reached for my lip balm.

It’s in a little basket on my desk beside the computer, and I know right where the lip balm sits without looking.

Well, I thought I did.

Apparently, a lip balm and a glue stick bear such a striking resemblance to each other.

Annoyed with myself, I decided it was time to clean the desk basket. I originally put it there to hold items I considered necessary for my workday, so here’s a list of some of those necessary items:

1. Two tubes of hand cream, one tube of foot cream, one tube of body cream
2. A lapel pin depicting an Oregon Pink Shrimp
3. A packet of all-purpose plant food
4. A miniature Slinky
5. Toenail clippers
6. Four small rocks
7. One glue stick
8. Refills for an automatic pencil I do not own
9. One packet of Sen-Sens
10. A fake rubber worm
11. Five hair elastics
12. A spoon
13. A tape measure
14. Two spools of dental floss
15. Seven lipsticks, four lip balms, and two tubes of lip gloss
16. Two small plastic lizards
17. An assortment of paperclips, safety pins, and pocket change

In case you think I’m making this up, here’s photographic evidence:

My mom has a catch-all drawer in the kitchen she calls “the hell drawer,” so it seems I have a “hell basket.”

I have no idea how half this stuff ended up in there or why I thought it was integral to my work.

Do you have a basket or a drawer that’s become the dumping ground for hodgepodge in your life? What is the strangest item currently in it?

Please share in the comments. I’ll be busy staging a battle between the worm and the lizards.

The query that hooked my agent

Oh, blog readers. I have a very special treat for you.

By popular demand, my amazing agent, Michelle Wolfson, agreed to do a guest post discussing my original query letter – the one that caught her eye back in December 2006.

A couple details before we get started:

If you haven’t already read my post on query stats, you might want to check that out for some background on my query process.

Secondly, you should keep in mind that while this query letter prompted offers of representation from four agents, and two of those agents tried to sell it (my first agent, then Michelle) this book never sold.

I repeat, this book never sold.

It makes me a little sad to type that, and it certainly wasn’t for any lack of trying. We had several editors teetering on the brink of buying it, but for whatever reason (The market? Timing? Aliens abducting editors and replacing them with sausages?) it never happened.

That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I still love this book, and while I’m ecstatic about the three-book deal Michelle recently nabbed for my romantic comedies, I’m still hopeful A TRICKY UNDERTAKING will someday find a home.

The words you see below in blue Arial are Michelle’s. The ones in red courier are taken word-for-word from my original query. I didn’t correct or polish anything before posting it here (much as I might have wanted to). You’ll see a couple small comments from me in bold.

So here we go, dear readers. Take it away, Michelle!

For the record, it’s been nearly four years since Tawna sent me her original query letter. I’ve read a lot of queries since then. So maybe if I were giving advice now (which I suppose is exactly what I’m about to do here), I might suggest a little tweak here or maybe a little style change there. Overall, I have to say I look at this query letter after all these years, and still see the core of everything I loved both then and now about Tawna the writer and Tawna the person.

Before I start, I have to reiterate my oft repeated query advice which is that the query is meant to get an agent’s attention. The goal is to get the agent to request pages. You are writers: you write and you edit. The same should hold true for your query letter. Every sentence should be written and later edited while thinking, is this sentence going to make her want to request pages? If not, cut it out.

Subject: QUERY: "orphaned" author seeks agent for new single-title work

So, Tawna’s subject line is a good exception to the Query: Title rule. Another would be Query from a published author. What Tawna does nicely which many people don’t do, is she explains exactly what she means by “orphaned” author right up front in the 1st paragraph. I don’t want to have to research what you mean.

Dear Ms. Wolfson,

I'm an author who was recently "orphaned" when Silhouette Bombshell announced it was closing the line in January. Since my debut novel was scheduled for release in February, I now have one formerly-contracted Bombshell (my rights have been reverted), two follow-up Bombshell projects that never made it to contract, and a burning desire to cleanse my palate by writing books in which the heroine is not required to blow up a building in the first chapter.

So the first paragraph gives a good, complete description (as complete as I would need for the moment) of Tawna’s history with Harlequin, and a nice introduction to her sense of humor (which is so integral to her writing) with her comment about her burning desire to cleanse her palate. I have said before that you should write your query in the tone of your book, and this is what I mean. Tawna’s books are funny and that was reflected in her query voice.

Allow me to tell you about my new (non-Bombshell) single-title project.

Allow me to tell you about my new project…OK. Those kinds of sentences are transitional and fine. Sometimes as I’m sitting there by myself I’ll shout NO at the computer. But inevitably I keep reading.

Wilma “Willie” Rising has two great desires in life: finding the perfect embalming solution, and finding a man who's not afraid of a woman with a desire to find the perfect embalming solution. As a mortician in Portland's trendy Pearl District, Willie leads a quiet life. But all that changes one afternoon when a police officer asks for help disinterring an urn of cremated remains for a criminal investigation. Suddenly, Willie finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery with a cloud of suspicion hanging over her head and a variety of strange characters looking to buy out her business, ruin her reputation, communicate with her deceased clients, take her to dinner – or some combination of all four.

So the first sentence of the descriptive paragraph is terrific. It paints a picture of Willie as a woman who is maybe a little bizarre – totally devoted to a pretty offbeat job, yet still looking for love. She sounds fun, quirky, and pretty great already. I was probably hooked just on this. The rest of the paragraph to me does a nice job summing up the story, showing that this is a cozy-esque mystery with the heroine in what I consider to be a fabulous new fun setting. It has all the elements that this type of story will need.

A TRICKY UNDERTAKING is a quirky, mainstream novel blended with equal parts dark humor, suspenseful mystery, and a tone I might have called "chick-lit" before people turned up their noses at that term. Given the public's recent fascination with TV series like "Six Feet Under" and "Family Plots," as well as nonfiction books like Mary Roach's "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers," I believe the market is ripe for a story like mine. Though I haven't seen any fiction works centered around a plucky female undertaker, readers fond of the style of Jennifer Crusie or Janet Evanovich would enjoy A TRICKY UNDERTAKING. This book – which also has series potential – is complete at approximately 75,000 words.

The next paragraph is good, if a drop long. I like to see that an author has taken the market into account. Especially here with a slightly offbeat topic, it was nice that Tawna pointed out some mainstream successes on this topic. I think I would drop the chick-lit part of the sentence. Even though she makes a joke of it, the joke is true – chick-lit really was a death sentence at a certain point – and I think I wouldn’t take a chance that an agent would just turn it down based on that. I think dark humor and suspenseful mystery works well enough. Tawna picked two authors who really were great comparisons both in market and in voice, and her own voice really shone through in the query and in the pages below. She finishes up by mentioning word count and series potential, both useful pieces of information.

I have the battle scars to prove I can sell a book, negotiate a contract, complete revisions, and write two additional follow-up books (which, alas, are also homeless now that Bombshell is dead). Even so, I've now gotten my feet wet writing category books with a decidedly mainstream feel, and I'm hopeful you might consider representing my work as I enter this new phase in my career.

The last paragraph about battle scars is fine. Not necessary but it was fine. I think these days I would start to feel like it’s getting a drop long. I would probably skim over a paragraph like that and get right to the pages.

I'm including the first few pages of TRICKY UNDERTAKING in the text below to give you an idea of the tone of the writing. If you'd like to see more, please don't hesitate to contact me. Thank you for your consideration, and have a great day!

Tawna will probably provide a link to these pages on her website (yes indeed, right here!) and if you haven’t read this excerpt yet, you should go read it now. I have probably read these beginning pages 40 times over the past 4 years and I never get tired of them and I never stop laughing at them. For the record, I think this is the best first sentence I have ever read. I have spent four years laughing every time anyone says “for the record,” and for the record, a lot of people say that. I knew very quickly that I wanted to read the entire book and I wasn’t disappointed.

I edited out my own sob story about how devastated I was that TRICKY didn’t sell, but I will say that like Tawna, I still have high hopes this series will someday be published.

The last thing I will say is that Tawna thought she had battle scars when she wrote this query letter, but unfortunately for her, those proved to be just flesh wounds. (If you don't know the story, go here). You never know how long your road to publication is going to be. You never know which query, which agent, which manuscript is going to be The One. But the important thing is not to give up.

Once you’ve perfected your query, remember it’s a numbers game. Send it out and send it out and then send it out some more. This is a subjective business and you deserve an agent who loves your writing as much as I love Tawna’s. So don’t settle for anything less. I wish you all the best of luck!

***
Applause! Applause! Applause!

Thank you so much to Michelle for taking time out to do this guest post.

Readers, do you have any questions? Fire away!

Weird things we do for our books

Non-writers tend to have a narrow idea of what authors do all day.

I was reminded it of this recently when I told someone I’m a romance author and she scrunched up her nose at me. “So you just sit there and write all day, every day?”

Not quite.

Very little of what I find myself doing lately is actual writing. Though there are weeks where I’m knuckled down cranking out thousands of words on a manuscript, that hasn’t been the case lately.

Here are a few things on my author to-do list in the last few days:

1. Shop for (and purchase) a pirate costume.
2. Fill out Guinness World Record™ paperwork to participate in the Portland Pirate Festival and help reclaim the title for “largest gathering of pirates.”
3. Spend 20 minutes on the phone with Willamette Valley Vineyards talking my way onto the waiting list for or the 20th Annual Oregon Grape Stomp Competition.
4. Spend 40 minutes figuring out what the hell a grape stomper does.
5. Pester local librarians to learn what gift bag items might prompt them to remember an author and purchase her books.
6. Purchase 50 organza baggies and 160 chocolate gold coins, then ponder the best way to assemble pirate booty bags for a “librarian speed dating” event.

I must admit, none of those tasks was in my mind eight years ago when I sat down to write my first novel.

And while there’s nothing in my three-book contract with Sourcebooks that requires me to don an eyepatch or squash grapes with my bare feet, these are the sort of things many debut authors find themselves doing to support their books.

Unless you are a big-name author, there’s a good chance you’ll need to play a significant role in marketing your own books. I’ve watched lots of authors print bookmarks and schedule book signings, but those who combine those efforts with a little outside-the-box thinking are the ones I tend to notice.

I don’t know yet if the annual Portland Pirate Festival will be a good place to hold signings for MAKING WAVES next year, or if any of the contacts I’m making at Oregon wineries will prove useful when the time comes to market LET IT BREATHE.

That’s what I’m hoping to learn these next few weeks.

Oh, and lest you think I’m being completely random, there is a pirate theme to MAKING WAVES, while LET IT BREATHE is set in the Oregon wine industry.

I know that measuring ROI (return-on-investment) will be nearly impossible at this stage, but I’m committed to doing everything I can to get out there and make contacts, to make a name for myself and my books.

If that name includes the word “weird,” all the better. That is a part of my marketing plan, after all.

Will it pay off? Hopefully.

If nothing else, I now have a pirate costume to wear grocery shopping.

Do you have any outside-the-box ideas for marketing your books when the time comes? What’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen another author do for promotion? Please share in the comments.

I’ll be busy throwing grapes on my kitchen floor and practicing my stomping technique.

And the winner is...

You guys really outdid yourselves in the latest What the @#$% is that? contest. Seriously, I peed down my leg laughing at some of your guesses.

In case you're just tuning in, here's how the game is played: my absentminded husband leaves mystery objects lying around. I post a picture, and you guys try to guess what it is.

As I shared on Friday, this is what I found sitting on top of his toolbox:

Many of you correctly guessed those are dusters, though the mystery is clearly why Pythagoras would have 60 of them strung together thusly.

Much as I enjoy the idea that it might be some sort of sex toy, it's nothing that exciting (well, it kind of is for Pythagoras).

The dusters are actually a common training tool for slalom ski racing. No, really.

Slalom racing requires the skier to slam his or her body into a plastic gate at a high rate of speed. As you can imagine, many newer racers find this rather daunting.

The dusters, however, are not daunting. The dusters are fun, and a good way to train racers to ski the correct tactic, timing, and line without sustaining bodily harm.

They really need to develop something like that for new writers.

So now that you know the story behind the mystery object, it's time to pick a winner. The process involved collecting a large quantity of sticks on a recent hike.

Then I wrote names on the sticks.

Wow. That picture looks weird. Those are my legs, I swear – I wasn't holding the stick with my boobs (though come to think of it, that would be a good trick).

Anyway, you'll have to watch the video to find out the rest of what happened. You may have to turn up your volume to hear, since I live in the windiest freakin' place in the entire state of Oregon. Alternately, you can watch it right on You Tube since I hear the quality is better that way.

So there you have it. Congratulations to Simon C. Larter. Email me to let me know what size It's Willamette, Dammit shirt you'd like and where I should send it.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

What the @#$% is that? Tell me and WIN!

Remember last month when I announced I'd been picked as one of five debut authors to blog for the next 12 months at The Debutante Ball?

Well my very first post is up today. Go visit, OK? Pretty please? It's scary being in a new place when you don't know anyone.

To celebrate my foray into the world of The Debutante Ball, we're going to play a game that should be familiar to readers who've been visiting awhile. What the @#$% is that? was born when I decided to share some of the mystery items my absentminded husband leaves lying around the house.

In case you're new, previous games can be found here and here.

So what did I find this time? I thought you'd never ask.

I went out to the garage yesterday in search of a tape measure. Piled on top of Pythagoras' toolbox was this:

That's an item in every man's toolbox, right?

Any idea what it might be? I actually do know, though I was a lot less certain the first time I found it lying in a heap on the bedroom floor.

Give me your best guess – silly or serious – what you think it might be. I'll tally the guesses in the comments at 10 a.m. on Sunday, September 5 and will pick a winner after that.

Oh, and if you're unfamiliar with how we pick winners around here, check out this and this and this.

What does the winner get? Cue lovely spokesdel here...

Crap, there are no lovely spokesmodels available. OK, you're stuck with me:

That's right, you get your very own Willamette Valley Vineyards T-shirt, as featured in yesterday's blog post. They come in a variety of sizes and styles, so the winner can pick what he or she likes.

Ready to guess? Please tell me – What the @#$% is that?

Places that twist your tongue

This was the first summer in nearly a decade that Pythagoras and I did not get on a plane and journey to some exotic foreign locale. Instead, we agreed to spend time exploring our own backyard.

Once we got tired of spying on the neighbors and stepping in dog poo, we broadened our travels and set out to explore some other Oregon locales we hadn’t seen for awhile.

An unexpected benefit of this sort of travel is that we didn't have to learn to pronounce new cities. Instead of bumbling the pronunciation of Essaouira, Morocco or Moloolaba, Australia, we boldly shouted the names of familiar places like Sweet Home and Seaside and Newberg.

We were both born and raised in Oregon, so we probably have an unfair advantage when it comes to pronunciations here. That’s not always the case for visitors.

I was at a concert once where the performer made the mistake of telling us how glad she was to be in “OREY-gone.”

The crowd would have reacted more kindly if she’d slit a puppy’s throat onstage and then peed on the carcass.

They booed. They chanted “OR-uh-gun! OR-uh-gun! OR-uh-gun!” Someone threw a pack of gum. I swear I saw the guy next to me pull a switchblade.

Mispronunciations like that aren’t limited to the name of the state. A friend told me about a time she and some pals journeyed through the coastal town of Yachats. When a debate broke out about how to say the name of the place, the camps were split between YAH-hots and YEAH-chats.

Outside intervention soon became necessary, so they pulled in at the local ice cream parlor and approached the cash register.

“Excuse me,” said one of the guys. “Settle a bet for us – how do you pronounce the name of this place?”

The girl behind the register studied them, then frowned. “Dairy Queen.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot this summer in light of the fact that all three of my contracted novels have ties to Oregon. Most of the places I describe are easy to pronounce, like Portland and Dundee and McMinnville.

Others might prove more challenging for readers unfamiliar with the region. How about the Willamette Valley? It’s the setting for the make-believe vineyard in LET IT BREATHE, but I’m certain at least one reader will stumble over its pronunciation.

Fortunately, a recent visit to Willamette Valley Vineyards outside Salem took care of this problem for me. I think this clears it right up, don’t you?

Are there places in your books or in your state that are tough to pronounce? Do you snicker at out-of-towners who trip over the words? If you’re a writer, what do you do to make sure your readers know the correct pronunciation of your settings?

Please share in the comments. I’ll be busy trying to figure out how to set my next novel in Garibaldi. Or Scio. Or Yoncalla. Or—

The downside of dream agents

It’s been two weeks since my post on query stats, and I’m still stunned by the hits it keeps getting. If I’d known you were so fascinated by my rejections, I would have blogged about the cute guy in seventh grade who laughed and said I looked like a boy.

My favorite thing about the query post is the discussion in the comments. I want to elaborate on something I wrote there, and also to tell you why you should ignore me.

Here’s my original comment:

If I were going to query agents again, I'd divide them into groups: 1) the dream agents, 2) the ones you'd still be delighted to work with, and 3) the ones you're a bit ambivalent about. Then add a fourth group, which would be one or two you really aren't interested in at all. Query that fourth group first just to test the waters. If you get a lot of "send it now!" responses, you might have something hot on your hands and should probably go right ahead and query group 2 and maybe even 1. If responses are lukewarm or negative, start working through your list from 3 to 2 to 1. By the time you hit group 1, you've refined your process and won't risk making an ass of yourself in front of the very agents you adore most. I should also add that you should NEVER query before you're ready. Polish and research and do the very best you can, but understand that you're still going to miss a few things on that first round of querying.

While I stand by what I wrote, I want to add a caveat – you may not know who your dream agent is yet.

Most authors invest a lot of time in deciding which agents to query. You gather names from Agent Query. You pore over discussion forums at Absolute Write. You read blogs. You stalk agents in the grocery store to see if you have the same taste in cereal.

Even then, you’ll only have half the story. Here’s why:

Discussion forums about agents draw a limited range of participants.
The Bewares, Recommendations & Background Check forum at Absolute Write is a great way to learn what people are saying about agents on your query list, but you’re only hearing a few perspectives. Authors who’ve left agents under unhappy circumstances seldom share those details publicly, as they gain nothing from doing so. Likewise, authors in happy marriages with agents don't always report back to those forums to gush.

Hearing from authors in the midst of the querying process can give you a feel for agent response times and rumors circulating in writing communities. But remember you’re not always getting a complete picture of what it’s like to work with that agent.

What gets me hot may not get you hot.
In my opinion, Pythagoras is the dreamiest thing since the ’07 Sunnyside Pinot Noir from Amity Vineyards, but I realize he’s not every woman’s ideal. Good thing, or I’d be in a lot more fistfights.

It’s the same with agents. Agent Rachelle Gardner had a great recent blog post in which she asked authors to share the most important things in agent/author relationships. Though plenty of us swooned over our agents, we didn’t agree on what made them spectacular. Some listed communication as the most crucial thing, while others judged by industry connections or editing abilities. We all have different preferences, and what makes an agent amazing in my eyes may not be the same thing you’re looking for.

Fixating on one agent closes your eyes to other great prospects
There are plenty of terrific agents with high profile blogs, hysterical Twitter feeds, and great word-of-mouth in writing communities. Just remember they’re not the only cats in the sandbox. When I queried agents, I made sure my list included a good mix of those whose every online word I’d devoured, and those whose names I couldn’t have picked off wanted poster at the police station.

I’ll be honest – I didn’t know a ton about Michelle Wolfson when I first queried her. What little I’d read was positive, but it wasn’t until later in the process that I discovered what a great catch she was.

In my opinion, an agent with a great passion for your writing and a shorter sales record is a hotter commodity than the one with a million sales and only a tepid interest in your book. You may be surprised to discover your perfect match is an agent you’ve never heard of before.

What are your thoughts? If you’re currently unagented, do you have a dream agent? Are you open to other possibilities? For those who have agents already, did you end up with the agent you thought you’d have? Please share in the comments.

I’m going to go find that cute seventh grade guy on Facebook to see if he still thinks I look like a boy.