Origin Stories Part II

The journey to finding a literary agent, and landing the publishing deal

[If you haven’t already read Origin Stories Part I, which tells the story of how I first started writing this book, find it here.]

There are many ways to publish a book.

But to have your book published “traditionally” (by one of the five major publishing houses) or with many of the larger “indie” presses, you have to have an agent.

A literary agent’s job is to serve as a writer’s representative in the marketplace, to do the actual selling and negotiating involved in publishing deals. A good one will have a firm understanding of the industry, balanced against each individual writer’s interests—this involves having the skills to help prepare a manuscript or book proposal in the most marketable way, and to find the perfect home for a writer’s story. A really good one will act as a support system as the writer navigates the often-emotional and convoluted process of getting their work published.

But you cannot simply hire a literary agent, like you might a real estate or insurance agent. No, when it comes to books, you have to compete with the thousands of other writers worldwide who need one. You have to convince an agent that your book is the one they should invest their time in. It is very common for writers to spend years querying agents, even decades, before landing one.

Upon my graduation from LSU in 2018, I technically had everything I needed to start searching for agents—a process which begins with a query email: 300-400 words in which to sell myself and my project well enough that the agent asks to read some of it, and, hopefully, represent it. I had the book proposal ready, a plan for my project, a solid writing sample.

But I didn’t send it. I didn’t send a query out for three whole years.

Daunted by the dread of rejection and the fantasy of making it all perfect, I put it off and put it off—tweaking the proposal continuously, revising the drafts I had, continuing my research, waiting for the right time. And within all of that waiting, life happened: a job, a move, an engagement, a dog, a pandemic, a pandemic wedding, my grandfather’s death. The project didn’t languish, exactly. But it wasn’t moving forward either.

It took a nudge from my dad, sometime in 2021—which I admittedly received at first with some indignation (“what do you know about publishing anyway, Dad?”)—before I finally sat down to write the query letter—Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal in hand.

(Interested in diving into the world of book publishing? Maum has a fantastic newsletter here on Substack that continues the enlightening conversations and advice on book publishing originally shared in her book, Before and After the Book Deal. Check it out below: )

As I was drafting and redrafting my query letter, I noticed that the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival was hosting a virtual “Writing Retreat” weekend, which featured several great sessions—one of them being a panel discussion with half a dozen young agents just getting their start, ready to offer advice to querying authors. There was even an opportunity to get critiques on your query letter. Perfect.

For that critique, by pure marvelous chance or by fate, I was given about five minutes to discuss my query letter draft with a young agent, around my age, working for the agency Janklow & Nesbit, Mina Hamedi. She was kind and she was straightforward (we only had five minutes, after all), with specific feedback and a dream come true proposal: she invited me to formally query her. She was interested in my book.

A quick Google search revealed that Mina’s literary interests were nonfiction with a personal bent, intergenerational stories, and “family secrets”. With industry heavyweight Lynn Nesbit as her mentor, Mina had also worked directly with many of my literary heroes (Anne Rice! Joan Didion!). She was a writer, too—working on a memoir about the legacy of her grandfather and the oral histories, the origin myths, surrounding that legacy. Reading her work, I felt as though I were reaching through a parallel universe, brushing up against a kindred spirit. Oh, and she was a cat person!

[Click here to read some of Mina’s work as a writer.]

I waited a few months, spiffed up my letter, and emailed her at 10:59 on a Tuesday in May—along with five other agents I was interested in working with. Then, having fully pep talked my soft-hearted self into a the toughest suit of armor I could manage, I sat and waited for the inevitable rejections.

Less than a day later, Mina responded:

Dear Jordan,

OF COURSE, I remember you.

I am thrilled by the outline and overview you sent me, as well as the samples. Please do send whatever else you have!

Yours,

Mina

Some weeks later, I was signing the papers sealing the deal on our partnership. I couldn’t believe the way the universe aligned, that I had found someone who so fiercely believed in my book, so soon. I kept waiting for the catch. It never happens this fast, people kept telling me.

During our initial phone calls, Mina not only expressed her excitement about my project, but she revealed that she saw it as I wanted others to see it: a story of intergenerational trauma, of mystery, of myth, of place. I was so honored to join her growing cadre of clients—largely made up of women writing from perspectives intensely shaped by the distinctions of our diverse individual cultures.

(The first book Mina ever sold as an agent—mine was the second!—will be available for purchase next month! ALL NIGHT PHARMACY by the incredible Ruth Madievsky—whose journey to publication has been an utter joy to watch from a far, and who has been such a kind voice of support to me throughout this process. The book has been getting a TON of buzz, and will be available July 11 wherever you like to buy your books—you can also get ahead of the game and pre-order your copy now :) )

Over the next few months, Mina helped me revise that LSU book proposal into something more refined, something ready to present to publishers. In October, we started the submission process—in which Mina sent the book proposal to a list of editors she thought might be interested. And again, I waited—this time for about a month. And this time, the rejections did come. People weren’t sure that the story, so personal and so steeped in this specific place, would be of interest to a general audience. One editor said they weren’t as pulled in by the narrative as they wanted to be. Ouch. “Nothing we didn’t predict,” Mina assured me. We’re waiting for the editor who can see the vision, she said. And so I kept on waiting, vibrating quietly against my day-to-day tasks, pushing the anxiety down as deep as I possibly could manage, trying to think and talk and stress about anything else.

And then, finally, an editor emerged, interested: Molly Gendell, from Mariner Books (a circa 1832 imprint of HarperCollins, which has published the likes of The Lord of the Rings, The Handmaid’s Tale, Life of Pi, Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Conner, George Orwell, and more ). A dream publishing house!

Molly asked to meet me via Zoom, to discuss my vision for the book. And like Mina, she saw it. She believed in it. The three of us—all young women emerging in the publishing industry as agent, editor, and author—instantly felt in perfect sync, from that very first call.

I was in the bathtub when, about a week later, Mina sent over Molly’s offer to publish my book, then titled Bodies of the Nezpique. We’d done it. A book deal! Six months before, this had only been a vague dream—something that might never even happen. Now, I was going to be an author. My book had found a home, and a legendary one at that. This story, and all of its lingering phantoms, were going to come to light. Finally.

Now I just had to finish writing it.