While I want an agent, I’m really in no rush.  I fact, we decided today that I’m going to the PNWA conference in July, which is supposed to be one of the best in the nation.  Lots of time is set aside specifically for working on pitches with agents and then pitching to them.  I think I could get an agent on board easier in person than in an e-mail.  As a published friend of mine said a wink-wink-nudge-nudge in person can help a lot, especially with the one-line pitch about “other girls in love with vampires.”  

Of course my challenge is getting across how different Sacred Blood is from other series despite having a human girl, half-vampire, and werewolf.   As my betas about that.  This was intentional.  This is why “Juliette won’t wait to be rescued, unlike other girls in love with vampires,” is my one-line pitch.  I’m relying on the schema people have with Twilight, and setting it apart by saying right up front that she’s no Bella.  Save Juliette?  Ha!  She saves herself, then goes into a literal battle and ends up saving everyone else too, ending up in the exact opposite situation of where she started in the book.  Instead of being at Nathaniel’s mercy, he’s at hers.  It’s wonderful.  I’m proud of it.  The ending is bittersweet, and the epilogue is brilliantly ambiguous, if I do say so myself.  Perfect?  No.  But it’s wonderful.  Speaking with agents in person may help me get across what I need to in a way I can’t via text.  The conference in my schedule has helped alleviate the tension and feeling that this either happens soon or it won’t at all.

I am actually more worried about getting an offer from an agent who, upon having personal correspondence and conversation, ends up not being the right one for me.  Turning down an agent would border on rude, at least in my mind.  Now I don’t want to claim to be the next best-selling author any agent would be a fool to turn down.  The wrong agent may not have the connections to get the deal that would turn my book into a best-seller, and I know that.  Plus different editors would choose different things to have changed.  But I do believe that Sacred Blood is worth the best agent I can get, meaning one who is as right for me as I am for that agent.

Just as a marriage between spouses won’t work well if it’s unidirectional, neither can an agent-writer marriage.  Both sides need to work together, and this means both being right for the other.  Knowing this doesn’t make the wait any easier to endure, but it does make the wait more peaceful, and in that way, it is a bit easier.