HIGMA PART ONE : in which I wax indulgent about my early writing journey

WHEN THE DREAM FEELS IMPOSSIBLE

Our story begins in the 90’s with a shy, skinny little brunette with terrible eyesight, a worse haircut, and a heart full of stories (many of which were about ducks or mice or badgers—I blame the Redwall series). Child Sierra was a socially anxious thing more comfortable with the characters in her head than the actual humans in her vicinity. So, naturally, one might think, cool! She must’ve grown up writing books, more books and eventually busting into the publishing world—full linear fashion! But that isn’t what happened.

(I know I’m being self-indulgent here, digging deep into my history to provide what definitely isn’t necessary context for the querying journey itself—too bad, you are my prisoner now).

My mother is a writer. I grew up watching her take university writing courses, write books, query, attend conferences, meet with her critique groups, and write more books. As a kid, I would beta read for her and felt really important doing so—it was fun and exciting to take part in her world. There’s a universe of importance here, but I’ll cut to the quick. Watching my mother go after traditional publishing and fall short of her ambitions, generated one of those pesky little ‘internal beliefs’ so beautifully outlined in Inside Out 2. It was thus: a career in traditional publishing is impossible.

To be clear, this was never something my mother told me. Indeed, if I’d been brave enough to share with her that my dreams mirrored her own, I fully believe she would’ve supported me, would’ve cheered me on, would’ve told me that it is possible (just as she does now). But I never shared with her; instead, I watched her work her tail off and determined—subconsciously—that being an author wasn’t something that could ever happen to someone like me.

So, I didn’t spend my teens writing books (though I did still spend them reading and daydreaming in spades and occasionally penning things that I quickly hid far far away because I felt ashamed for encroaching upon this impossible space that belonged to my mother—yes, there is some very distorted thinking in that sentence, I’m fully aware). And when I attended university, I didn’t take creative writing or English courses. I didn’t tell a single soul that the dream of my heart—to be an author—smoldered in dying embers. Instead, I focused on a bachelor’s in psychology and immediately applied for graduate school (because we all know a psych degree is little more than a pretty piece of paper on its own). And then, something shifted.

WHY GRAD SCHOOL MATTERED

I went to school to become a mental health therapist, and when you go to school to learn how to help people through their traumas, negative beliefs, and emotional stuck points, something funny happens: you end up confronting them in yourself. This translated to grad-school Sierra peeking into the dusty little cave where child Sierra huddled with all her books and all her dreams, taking her hand, and leading her outside where the sun was shining.

Thus, in 2018, when I was mid-way through my twenties and mid-way through grad school, I finally decided to write my first book, confronting the reality that the only person stopping me from pursuing a career in writing was me. That there was nothing shameful about wanting what my mother wanted and that difficult odds did not equate to impossibility. 

MY FIRST BOOK (a YA/adult crossover, too-many-POV high fantasy)

Writing what I will forthwith refer to as Book One was a labor of joy. I had so much fun allowing myself to create freely and without shame. I already knew, from my mother’s journey, that the path to traditional publishing was long and harrowing, but I wasn’t worried about that just yet. I simply wanted to see if I could write a book, start to finish.

My first taste of rejection came when I was about 60% of the way through finishing Book One’s first draft. Once a year, Brandon Sanderson teaches an application only 15-person creative writing workshop. I submitted the first chapter of my book, answered a bunch of questions, and ran off into the mountains to hide. This was the first time I’d put my work out there to be judged by people in ‘the industry’. I convinced myself it was a test—that if I was accepted, it meant I had a future in writing. If I wasn’t… well. 

Anyone want to a wager a guess as to what happened? Yup, that’s right. I didn’t get in.

That first rejection cut deep. The old belief that I’d been trying to rewrite, the one that told me I was doing the impossible, flared to life, hugged me with barbs, whispered at me to stop trying, to give up. After all, you can’t fail if you don’t try. (Hello perfectionism, my old friend). And, licking my wounds, I listened. I set Book One aside, stopped attending my critique group, and didn’t write another word until after I’d finished grad school. (I could temper this by saying I was also very busy in my second internship, doing a full load of classes, and caretaking my first child, who was still nursing, but that would be a masking of the truth. I didn’t stop because I was busy; I stopped because I was scared and hurt. And sometimes, that’s okay.)

By the time I graduated, my pride was healed enough to get back to Book One. I finished the first draft during the summer of 2019 and dove headfirst into revisions. I read through the entire queryshark archives, listened to hours and hours of writing podcasts, and spent more hours researching agents. But did I query? Reader, I did not. 

I’m not sure why. I don’t have a good reason. In retrospect, I think I was scared, but I also think I knew I wasn’t ready. I’d written a book, and it wasn’t bad, per se, but I held no delusions as to its greatness. It was a mash-up of the things I liked to read but wasn’t wholly original; it was the first step in me finding my voice, establishing my style, learning how to plot and how to revise. I’d done the thing I’d set out to do: Finish A Book. 

ONTO BOOK TWO (a standalone YA fantasy in first present)

I began Book Two (I’m so clever at naming things, can’t you tell?) with the intention of writing something easy to pitch; something hooky that would make the eventual querying journey more palatable; something more original than my first book. Book Two took me a year to write—I finished draft one during the summer of 2020, just after the pandemic obliterated the landscape of our lives.

This time, I was ready to query. Nine beta readers, multiple revisions, a finalist placement at a writing contest, a twitter account with 6 followers and my first (unsuccessful) pitch event later, I sent my initial queries. The exact number? I couldn’t begin to tell you—I am a chaos gremlin when it comes to silly things like organization—but it wasn’t more than 15 spaced out slowly.

Cue the form rejections. I’ll admit, these didn’t hurt too badly because I’d known querying would be hard—my expectations were low. That isn’t to say they didn’t hurt, but they were easier to shrug off. Then, from a small press, I got a partial request that turned into a full request that—months later in 2021—turned into an R&R. I paused querying, did the R&R, and waited to hear back. While waiting, I birthed my second child, moved cross-country, moved cross-country again, started a new job, sent Book Two to a writing contest where I took third place, and began writing—drum roll please—Book Three.

The small press editor got back to me in the fall of 2021 saying they were passing my book to another editor who then requested a second R&R. Yup, that’s right. Another one. It was an opportunity for me to really look at Book Two. A piece of feedback I’d been given along the way was that the book was good, the writing was good, but it felt too ‘safe’, like I was holding back, playing within established boundaries as opposed to mining the story’s true potential. That feedback stuck with me because I knew, in my bones, it was true. The book was safe, intentionally so. I was too caught up in worrying about offending or bothering the people who might read my work that I wasn’t authentically telling the stories I wanted to tell.

Deciding to do that second R&R was a reckoning with myself—with the story I wanted to tell, but also with who I wanted to be as an author. The result? A full rewrite where I changed tense, POV, changed major plot points, and aged the book up from YA to adult.

THE RETURN OF SANDERSON/BOOK THREE (a literary-leaning adult high fantasy)

In the fall of 2021, around the same time as that second small press R&R, I had the opportunity to once again apply for Brandon Sanderson’s 15 student workshop. Thus, precisely three years after being rejected, I was accepted. The living room took the full brunt of my excited dancing.

Sanderson’s workshop ran from January 2022 to April 2022. I could easily write an entire blog post about my experience learning from and being critiqued by him, about the friendships I gained, the industry knowledge imparted… but this post is already getting lengthy (if you’re still reading up to this point, I commend you). Sanderson’s workshop was a turning point for me because it was the first time I met and interacted with writers who had managed to land agents through querying, writers on sub, and writers who were living the dream of being an author. It shone a light on the end of the tunnel, made the dream tangible in a way it had never felt tangible before.

During the workshop, I set my Book Two revision aside and focused on Book Three, which I finished the summer after the workshop ended. But instead of jumping into revising and querying, I switched gears back to Book Two. Not because I was necessarily gung-ho about the small press opportunity (Sanderson’s class had more or less talked me out of it) but because I felt I owed the story, and myself, the time to make it as good as it could be. I wanted to see if I could do it—if I could complete a revision that intense. It was, for me, a personal challenge. And, because I essentially wrote an entirely new book out of Book Two, I didn’t finish until February of 2023. At which point, I immediately submitted the completed revision to the interested small press editor, despite it being over a year since she’d given me the R&R. I wanted to know what she thought of it.

And then, while I waited, I started querying for real. This time, I did something I hadn’t done during the years previous: I found a writing community through twitter, primarily other querying authors. As much as I procrastinated and dreaded joining social media for real, doing so was one of my best decisions (younger me would hate current me for saying that but it’s true. Twitter allowed me to make great friends and informed me of opportunities I otherwise would never have found). And then, to my surprise and excitement, the small press editor came back to me with an offer of publication. It felt like the universe saying: you did it.

SAYING NO

I sat on that small press offer for a full month. I went back and forth and back and forth on whether to accept. In the end, I decided their contract didn’t feel right to me and said no—but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t nudge agents with the offer. I didn’t feel right doing so knowing I couldn’t accept it. I was scared I would never have such an opportunity again. But I also knew I needed to wait for the right opportunity. Even if that meant writing ten more books.

BOOK TWO STATS 

I sadly do not have exact numbers for those curious (again, chaos gremlin). Nor did I know querytracker existed, let alone how to use it, so we are left with my feeble rememberings. I believe I sent out around 20 queries for Book Two’s revision and (other than the small press offer) got a single request. I shelved the book early in its querying life because I had a gut feeling it needed more work (yes, even after that overhaul revision). And I was more excited about focusing on Book Three.

WRITETEAM MENTORSHIP/QUERYING BOOK THREE

Around the same time I turned down the small press offer, I applied to the WriteTeam Mentorship program with Book Three. (And, of course, began writing Book Four. Spoiler: Book Four is the one that landed me my agent.)

Again, I could do a whole blog post on WriteTeam, but I’ll keep it short. I was accepted into WriteTeam by my wonderful mentor, Cate Baumer (go buy her books, they’re amazing) and, with her edit letter in hand, buckled down to tackle Book Three revisions.

But it wasn’t the revision or the edit letter that I found most valuable (though definitely still valuable, don’t get me wrong). It was the friends I made—one friend in particular, another mentee (hi Zilla!) who quickly became a CP and is now a ride or die. Through her, I was introduced to a whole bunch of other incredible writers. The community I found because of WriteTeam has been invaluable to me. Find your people. It matters. This industry is hard and having supports to lean on makes it bearable.

I completed Book Three’s revision by the end of 2023. Without a doubt, I knew this was my best work. What made it different? The time and hard work I put in. I remember listening to advice from a master in their field responding to how one can achieve what this master had achieved. Their answer? Pay the price. Put in the work. Sacrifice the time. I knew I had done that.

In January of 2024, I sent my first queries. I was scared, because putting yourself out there is always scary, but also confident. Guess what happened? More rejection. When my first partial request came back a rejection less than 24 hours later, I cried. Because I’d done everything right. I’d written books, revised books, read every craft book under the sun, pitched on twitter time and again (and I hate pitching on twitter) done two mentorships, attended conferences (I got a scholarship for Futurescapes when I was in Sanderson’s class), had published short fiction, won awards, beta read others’ work, let myself be critiqued… this was my best work. I was proud of it. What more would it take?

HIGMA PART TWO: in which I dish on the offer period 

BOOK FOUR AKA THE BOOK THAT DID IT (an adult romantic space opera)

While Book Three felt like it was dying a slow death in the query trenches (I went a solid two and half months without a single request) I went to work finishing Book Four. You’ll recall, I began drafting Book Four more than a half year previous. It was a book I started writing for fun—not with the intention of ever querying. That’s important here.

The concept of Book Four originated when my sister called me and asked if I’d write her a book that centered around a ‘The Bachelor’ style dating show. She’d recently run out of Bachelor-style books and was in a desert. So, she came to me to quench her thirst. And what did I, the loving elder sister, say? “Not a chance in the deepest circle of hell!” Followed by a laugh because the idea of me writing a romance was that funny. (Okay, I’ve embellished for dramatic effect; point is, I’d written romantic arcs before, but they were always secondary; I in no way considered myself a romance writer).

But then the idea wouldn’t leave me alone—it had the audacity to assume a form and began to harass me when I least expected: whilst reading, between client sessions at work, playing monster-eat (don’t ask) with my children… I had no choice but to call my sister back and say, “Alright, fine. I’ll do it. But it needs to be sapphic, set in space and the reality show contestants have to die.” She was fully on board. 

Book Four was a breath of fresh air from the heavier fantasies I’d been writing—it was an opportunity for me to shed the pressure I was putting on myself to make something ‘great’ and, for once, just making something fun. I told myself I’d never query it; that it was a creative break. It was, as a mentor once coined the term, a “fuck-it” book. But as my wordcount rose, I found myself falling in love with the characters and their story—and I thought, hey, maybe there’s something here.

GETTING THE FIRST OFFER

I finished draft one of Book Four in June of 2024. My CPs (critique partners for any unfamiliar with the abbreviation) encouraged me to pitch in #Queerpit, a twitter pitch event held on July 1st. The book wasn’t all the way ready—it still needed a solid revision—not a huge one, I have a tendency to revise as I go so my first drafts usually end up relatively clean, but a revision all the same (please don’t turn me in to the pitch event police). But I figured, it’s close enough! I’ll pitch and if I get any likes, I’ll query them after I’ve completed the revision, no rush.

Now, for context, I was still out in the trenches with Book Three. You’ll recall I’d begun querying in January 2024. By July, I was somewhere in the ballpark of 100 queries deep with 10 or so requests. This becomes important later.

Queerpit ended up netting me a total of 8 agent likes—my most successful pitch event to date. I was floored, and excited. Now, a brief aside on pitch events: I hate them. The end. Just kidding. My brief aside is this: I’ve never been adept at utilizing social media. I’m too shy, too naturally abhorrent of being the center of attention, too terrible with things like pitches and graphics. I credit my CPs, particularly Megan, (hello love!) with making those for me. But my hatred of pitch events is somewhat irrelevant and I must begrudgingly admit that they can help. Key word being can. Are they absolutely necessary to finding an agent? Not at all. Are they another tool that can be utilized, and when utilized, can help? Without a doubt.

Okay back to Book Four. I entered my pitch likes into a plain excel doc and then set it aside so I could complete my revision before querying them. Until something unexpected happened. One of the agents who liked my pitch reached out via those little QT messages. They shall heretoforthwith be referred to as Agent One. When Agent One liked my pitch, they were already in possession of my Book Three full manuscript. Initially, they’d asked me to wait until they’d made a decision on Book Three before querying with Book Four. Which worked just fine for me cause I needed time to do my revision anyway.

But then they sent that message. The gist? They were enjoying my Book Three and wanted to glance at Book Four to get a better idea of my work as a whole. They asked for the first 50 pages—I didn’t even have to send a query! So what did I do? I woke up bright and early the next morning (okay it was like 8am; I’m a night owl allergic to early mornings but for me, that was early) and immediately got to work revising the first 50 pages. By noon, I sent them off, certain it would take a week, at minimum, to hear back, but probably longer. In that time, I’d be certain to finish my revision.

But what’s that saying? Publishing moves slow until it doesn’t.

Less than an hour after sending off the partial, Agent One messaged me back asking for the full. I about jumped out of my seat. Up to this point, Book Four had been read by me and only one CP. I had no idea it would be so well received. Genuinely.

But the full wasn’t ready. And I wasn’t willing to send it off prematurely. So, I messaged Agent One back saying I’d have it to her by early the next week and then locked myself inside a metaphorical cave for the next 72-ish hours. I didn’t eat, hardly slept, and my fingers fused themselves to my keyboard. I do not recommend this—there are 7,000 healthier ways to complete a revision. But, within three days, it was done. And, before I could talk myself out of it, I yeeted the full to Agent One. Then planned to sleep for an entire week.

By late the next morning, I had an email in my inbox from Agent One asking to set up a call. They’d read the full late into the night and were interested in offering representation. My brain fully short-circuited. My soul left my body. I probably transported to seventeen alternate dimensions.

We set up a zoom call for the next day. Remember how I was already exhausted from the long weekend revising and had planned to sleep for a week? Yeah, that wasn’t happening. In an adrenaline-fueled stupor, I researched questions to ask on the call and went on a thousand calm down walks to process my nervous energy.

The call went swimmingly. Agent One was wonderful, put me at ease, answered all my questions, and officially offered representation. I set a three-week deadline and hung up. Why three weeks instead of two? I wanted to give the other agents I’d queried plenty of time to read and decide—plus it was dead in the middle of summer and a busy time for all. Extra consideration of everyone’s time felt appropriate.

The time from Agent One’s partial request to the official offer of rep was five days. FIVE DAYS. This was the kind of thing that happened to other people, those unicorns you hear about but exist a universe away, their luck the magic of another world. I’m still waiting, months later, for the whole thing not to feel surreal. 

OFFERS TWO THROUGH SEVEN

After screaming with my CPs about the offer call, I set about nudging agents. I informed everyone who had my query, either of Book Three or Book Four, as well as everyone who still had my Book Three full manuscript. This was somewhere in the ballpark of 55 agents. It was a lot of emails—I think I stayed up well past my already irresponsibly late bedtime sending them.

By the next afternoon, I received my second email requesting a call, this one from Agent Two. (For context, I queried Agent Two on a Monday, they requested the full manuscript on Tuesday, the offer email came Wednesday, and we had our call Thursday). A second agent had read my book in a 24-hour period. My bones liquified into a puddle on the floor. My soul eddied out with them.

I was fully living on adrenaline. Our systems are not meant to stay that hyped for that long. And this was only the beginning.

The full requests and step asides poured in. Friday morning of the same week ( the day after Agent Two’s call, which was an absolute delight) I went into a workday booked solid with eight client sessions scheduled back-to-back. My third session was on telehealth, the only medium that allows me to occasionally glance at my phone while working—not in a ‘pick it up and scroll’, kind of way, rather a quick glance when the lock screen lights up. And so, while talking a client through a somatic exercise, I glimpsed a notification from Agent Three, also known as the agent I ended up signing with, Cameron McClure, and immediately tracked the phrase “so I am definitely interested in offering rep on this.” My heartrate spiked—a third offer?? But I didn’t have the ability to read the full email, so I flipped my phone over and forced myself to compartmentalize like I’ve never compartmentalized before. 

It turned out that Cameron, who’s based on the east coast, was traveling to my neck of the woods during the offer period, and therefore suggested we meet up in person. We scheduled a meet-up towards the end of the offer window. In the meantime, she wanted to dive into Book Three (she’d been in possession of my Book Three full when I nudged with the offer on Book Four but had prioritized reading Book Four. Now, she wanted to read Book Three, as well, before we met).

My fourth offer came in mid-way through the following week. My fifth offer trailed closely after. My sixth offer call happened a few days before my deadline. My seventh and final offer came in just under the wire, the morning of my deadline—we hopped on a zoom that same morning. I ended up letting all the offering agents know I was extending my deadline another day. I needed more time to decide.

THE DIFFICULTY IN THE DREAM

I’m gonna back up here a second. Obviously, I was living a dream turned reality. To have a single person respond to something I’d written with the enthusiasm of any one of the offering agents, would’ve been incredible. To have so many industry professionals doing so and in quick succession? We skipped cloud nine and went straight to cloud eleven point five. But there was a darker side to this coin of awesomeness (something that might sound whiny and obnoxious to anyone reading who would give their left kidney for a single agent to offer, let alone multiple; I know, that was me once, too). What’s that darker side? For me, it contained two parts: first, the absolute torture of deciding between dream agents (champagniest of champagne problems but still very real) and second, the unending stress.

I spent two of the three weeks during my offer period sick as a drowned rat. In the heat of summer. While both of my children (who were normally always sick because of daycare) remained well. I can only deduce that my illnesses were very much stress induced. The constant excitement, the many calls and conversations (with friends, family, and the authors of the agents offering rep), the way my brain wouldn’t stop chewing over every word of every email and every conversation… I was lucky, grateful, and utterly drained. To be clear, this isn’t something I would go back and change; I’m grateful for every conversation had, for all the support, and feel that I handled it in the best way I could have at the time. This is simply a recognition that the excitement took a toll, physically and emotionally. 

MAKING A DECISION

I had this little problem where I would come out of every agent call (or meet-up in Cameron’s case) fully sold on that agent. In all honesty, all seven agents were great; all seven had something to offer. But I could not work with all seven—I had to choose one. 

I compared contracts, chatted with authors, made mental lists, bought a month-long subscription to Publishers Marketplace to look up deals, talked with friends and family about what exactly I wanted out of an agent-author relationship, and regularly checked in with my body to see what my gut was saying.

I wanted an agent who could shepherd me for a whole career, not just for this one book. Someone easy to talk with (this was high on my list because, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m shy and socially anxious and discussing my work with others is incredibly vulnerable and difficult) and someone with good industry connections in my genres. The difficulty was, more than one agent fit that bill. And in my gut, I knew there wasn’t a wrong choice, that I would likely build a beautiful career with any of the offering agents. 

Ultimately, I chose Cameron because she fit those boxes and some. She was my frontrunner before her offer ever lit up my phone’s notifications. And, although some of the other agents did nearly sway me—there are some great ones out there—choosing Cameron simply felt right. Simple and annoyingly nebulous as that.

BOOKS THREE AND FOUR STATS

For those who came for the numbers and are scrolling past my self-indulgent drivel…

BOOK THREE: (ballpark means my stats are estimated cause my records are lacking)

Queries sent: ballpark 100

Rejections: ballpark 70

CNR: ballpark 20

Requests: 12

Offers: 1

BOOK FOUR:

Queries sent: ballpark 35

Rejections: ballpark 10

CNR: ballpark 10

Requests:15

Offers: 6

Total offers between books: 7

(The full picture of the stats for books 3 and 4, though given separately, are far more intertwined. For example, 4 of my Book Four offers came from agents already in possession of my Book Three full or query; everything was a bit of a jumbled mess and Book Three definitely influenced the success of Book Four.)

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you’re here, at the end, then you deserve a medal. I’ll send it out shortly. Apologies if it arrives in a parallel dimension, that keeps happening, I’ll have to check with my IT guy.

While I take the next steps in this wild, trying, endlessly frustrating, and occasionally beautiful publishing journey, I’ll close with a few thoughts. How did I get here? First, by continuously honing my craft. Second, luck. You can’t control the luck bit. You can control the craft. Keep going and, eventually, those two are bound to line up one way or another.

What made the difference between Book Four and my previous books? Four things that I can conceptualize:

• First, I was a better writer when I wrote Book Four than I was for any of my previous books. A guiding tenet for me throughout this journey has been that my books are not the products I’m selling—I am. And each word written makes me a better writer.

• Second, the freedom I afforded myself to simply have fun allowed me to do exactly that: have fun. And when the writer is having fun, usually the reader is, too.

• Third, this was a book that I wrote specifically for my sister’s taste, which meant writing something more accessible and commercial than anything I’d written before. It was a marriage of what I love (which tends to lean more literary and genre) and what she loves (which tends to lean more commercial and romantic).

• And fourth, the luck of market timing. I happened to write a romantic science fiction book right as the market was looking for the next iteration of romantasy.

It’s crucial here to note that the ability to pursue a career in art is often rooted in privilege. The fact that I had the time, resources and energy—health privilege is such a real thing—to focus on writing and reading, as well as attend workshops, mentorships and conferences, isn’t something I take, or will ever take, for granted. It absolutely played a key role in my success. Privilege always does.

Thank you for reading and feel free to ask me any follow-up questions or leave any comments.

I’m excited to see where I go from here. Without a doubt, the rejections aren’t over. Without a doubt, there are even greater challenges ahead. Without a doubt, I’ll someday look back on this period of my life with the blessing of hindsight and see things very differently than I do now. It’s impossible to predict what will come next but I’ll say this much:

✨ Vague things may or may not be happening ✨