Thankful Thursday #1

Note from KE:
I’ve decided to express my thankful self more often.
I mean, I do, in real life, to people,
but I want to write it out too.

I have no shortage of things to be thankful for,
so I am making a goal
to write about one each week.

This week, I’m thankful for:
My agent, Lara Perkins!

Lara is patient,
kind,
full of great ideas,
has the best laugh,
and works tirelessly
to get the best books into the hands of editors, and then, into the hands of readers!

I am so thankful to have her on my team.

My how I got an agent story will be similar to others you read, I bet,
but I also bet mine will be the only one where laser tag plays a big role!
Here’s the video version!

And the longer version here:

My backstory will sound familiar too.
Writing since I was a kid,
started writing picture books when I was around 20,
goofed around for a bit and then started reading up on how I should REALLY approach this
if I wanted to make it a career.

My first step was critique group,
and then my first SCBWI conference in LA.
For the next three years, I basically did the following:

Wrote,
read,
critiqued,
went to SCBWI LA.

This worked for me because I was learning A TON,
from reading,
writing,
and attending conferences.
I had a few critiques in LA where I learned a lot too,
but I send nothing out.

Why?
I was working full time
(teaching 300 different kids a week about history in interactive presentations)
and going to school on Friday nights and all day Saturday (Waldorf Teacher Training)

I wanted to give writing my all,
and I just didn’t have the time.
So until I could,
I figured I would just write and write
and read and read.

When I finished training,
I realized I wanted to EVENTUALLY teach at a Waldorf school,
but I had to pursue this writing thing with all I had.
Well, all I had after those 50 hours of work that paid the bills.

So I just upped everything.
Wrote more.
Read more.
And started researching query letters.

And, let me tell you,
those things are a nightmare.
I wrote one, sure,
but I’ve never been a person who jumps off paper well.
I need to meet people in person.

So when I heard about the ABLA Big Sur Writing Workshop,
I was excited.
Agents and editors in the same place?
I could talk to them?
Where do I sign up?

I stopped myself from getting too excited right away,
because I noticed it started on a Friday afternoon.
One good thing about my job is that I’m scheduled WAY in advance.
Like, a year in advance.
One bad thing is,
there’s not much I can do to change that schedule.

I thought for sure I would be working a full day,
so when I saw I only had a half day,
I took it as a sign.

Now, the money.
It may come as a surprise to people that I’m frugal.
I manage my money well, and save up from each paycheck
for the summer, and other expenses through the year.
That’s all well and good,
but it also means I don’t have hundreds of dollars available on a whim.
(I don’t suspect many people do!)

I calculated.
It was a lot of money.
But I needed to do it.

The next step was calling my brother, Davey,
who owns his own laser tag business.
It’s OUTDOOR laser tag, and super fun.
He’d been asking me for a while about working for him,
since I’m good with kids.

So I took him up on the offer,
bought some camo pants (it’s the uniform!)
and traded in my weekends for some extra cash.

The site is an hour away from my house,
and he only ever brought me out there if he had three parties,
so I worked pretty much all day, at least 10 to 12 hours most times.

I’d come home,
collapse on the couch,
take the cash,
and color in my chart.

I had one with the amount of money I needed at the top,
with increments of 25 going up.
I colored and worked,
colored and worked.

Then I formatted 8 of my best picture book manuscripts
(yes, I said EIGHT, remember, I’d been going at this for at least 3 years!)
and gathered anyone I knew who would want to read them.

I asked them to just do this:
Put the eight stories in order from the one you liked the best to the one you liked the least.

I got a bunch of feedback,
and decided on which four to bring to Big Sur.

And then I was off.
That weekend was awesome.
I met agents,
editors,
other writers,
and ate tons of awesome food.

I think I did get a query letter critique,
but managed to jump off the page by reading the whole thing dramatically.

I was part of two different critique session groups,
one lead by an editor,
the other by an agent.
Each group met twice over the course of the weekend.
At each meeting, I presented a different manuscript for review and discussion.
I wanted to get all I could out of my time there.

At the end of the conference,
I had a lead on an agent.
The very agent who lead one of my sessions.
I loved the way she gave feedback, her smile, and her laugh.

And that agent ended up being Lara.
We just celebrated our first agentversary (yup, created word)
and I couldn’t be more happy.

A year and some months later, I’m still a busy person.

I work a ton, and, as people who work with kids know, sometimes that can drain you something fierce. Sometimes you just want to get home and go to sleep.
At five in the afternoon.
My housemates laugh at this.

Or other days I go to capoeira,
train myself or teach even MORE kids.

Somedays I go surfing,
and everyday I spend at least an hour or two talking to my boyfriend.
(He lives in NY…soon to be moving to CA. I LOVE talking to him don’t get me wrong, but still, it takes time)

And there’s time spend reading too!

I’ve never wanted to deal with any of the business side of publishing.
Not that I’m not interested, I just don’t want to spend time doing that if I don’t have to.
I have always wanted to just write.
And having Lara allows me to do that.

She is SUPER encouraging,
and offers criticism and advice on how to make it better hand in hand.
She’s always available to talk,
and believes in my work 110 percent.

Most times I’m a good enough cheerleader for myself,
but sometimes I need a boost.
She always has my back.

And she’s super fun too!
Have I mentioned I love her laugh?
Whenever we talk on the phone, I’d say we spend at least a third of the time laughing. No joke.

She listens patiently to my new ideas,
gives me extensive notes on manuscripts I send her,
and encourages me to pursue ideas I present to her.

She’ll tell me when something isn’t working,
and pull no punches about how to fix it.

And she’s always keeping me in the loop
about what our next steps are.

I can say,
without a doubt,
that I would get less done if I didn’t have Lara.
Every time I talk to her I am reminded of my dream of having 60 books before I’m 60.
(yes, actual dream. It would be nice to have that many published, but for now I’m working on writing that many!)
I get so excited about writing all over again,
which, if you’re a writer, you know you need to be reminded of sometimes.

She does so much work on my behalf
that I would not have the time or knowledge to do.
I know my career is moving forward leaps and bounds because of her.

So, I’ll close with a thankful statement.

I am thankful for my agent,
Lara Perkins,
for supporting me,
believing in me,
and riding shotgun (well and sometimes driving I’d say!) down the Kidlit writer career road.

I feel like my career will be one long road trip down that road,
and she’s the best person to go along with me that I can think of 🙂

Until next time, what are you thankful for?
KE