How I Got My Agent (Again)!

Read about my publishing journey thus far!

Yep, you read that correctly. I have an agent again!!!

So, buckle up, because this might be a loooong post. Let’s start at the very beginning.

The Background

I write pretty much everything. Poetry, short stories, novels, creative nonfiction—you name it. Fiction, of course, is my main and first love, since I was a little kid. I grew up reading a lot (I come from a family of English majors and therefore, readers) and spent a lot of time immersing myself in stories, whether in books, movies, or TV shows. I’ve been writing for as long as I can recall, and I’ve been told I was telling stories even before I knew how to speak.

And then, of course there’s that one book that kind of just . . . changed me. Like, for the better. That was Divergent by Veronica Roth (and yes, I’m soooo excited about the new books—but that’s for another post for a different day). It was this book that made me realize this is what I wanted to do: write for the rest of my life, for a career.

Before Roth’s novel, I had started a YA historical fiction book back in middle school (wrote about 30,000 words) that I truly hope never sees the light of day (lol), but it taught me how to write a longer story. For many years between middle school and high school, I bounced back between genres and story ideas, never choosing one to fully focus on.

But that all changed in college. I always knew I wanted to be a creative writing or English major, so I received my Bachelor’s in both at the University of Arizona! My sophomore year of college led to my first creative writing class ever: Intro to Fiction Writing, where I learned the value of getting my work critiqued.

The summer after my sophomore year, I attempted writing a book again after some helpful feedback in workshop for a YA fantasy. What they surprisingly don’t teach you in creative writing classes in undergrad is what the industry standard is for publishing, like word count, how to write a query letter, etc. I wrote 40,000 words of a YA FANTASY and thought I was done and started querying (so sorry to those agents I did that to—whew! Lol, not my best moment).

Around this time, I started a YA dystopian.

How I Got My Agent the First Time

I graduated college in the pandemic. Looking for a job at this time was . . . tough, but because of it, it allowed me to write as much as possible. I was about 20,000 words into my YA dystopian after workshopping different chapters in creative writing classes, but COVID was at its peak, and suddenly, I got an idea for an atmospheric YA murder mystery. Honestly, the idea came out of nowhere, since I’d never written a mystery before, but it kept nagging at me, like it needed to be written. So, I ditched the YA dystopian (I really hope to get back to it someday!) and pursued the first YA mystery.

Around the time I started this novel, I joined a writing group that stemmed from a virtual writing event. Together, we’d set up times to write together. I also discovered a cool little function of Discord (that honestly was probably the biggest game changer of all) called Sprinto. Basically, you added a certain time and your word count and wrote until time was up. As someone who writes without an outline or any sort of plan, it was the best type of structure I needed. And before I knew it, it was a habit to write every day or almost every day and get in word count.

The story came out at about 80,000 words, aka my first fully finished novel, titled LET YOUR SECRETS LIE. I did a few rounds of edits (I’m a very clean first drafter) and received feedback from betas.

I learned about pitch events early on, while I drafted my book. I fully planned to do Pitch Wars . . . when they discontinued it lol. Instead, I participated in DVPit (DV = diverse voices) when it was still on Twitter and then LatinxPitch around the same time.

I found my first agent through agents participating in LatinxPitch and went to shoot my shot by cold querying her. It was a bit of a unique situation because not only did I receive a full request 2 hours later, but she also wanted to set up a call. I didn’t know what to think because wasn’t “the call” the offer call?

I had no idea what to expect. We set up a time to chat about a week later, and in a week, she read the full manuscript and offered. Her dad had been an agent, and she was getting strong mentorship from a reputable agency I was familiar with. She told me she knew instantly by the voice in my writing and the story I was telling that she had to represent me, and the full only further proved that.

I did the standard “give two weeks” notice for other agents but ultimately picked her, even though she was the only agent who ended up offering. But I guess you could say I had the “unicorn experience,” as my querying journey only took 6 weeks.

I did rounds of edits with this agent, and then we went on sub. (*On sub or submission means your agent pitches to editors at publishing houses to get you a book deal.) I had editor interest from Disney from DVPit but was ultimately ghosted, which unfortunately, isn’t unusual. We went on sub widely, but the book died on submission to publishers after a year. It was disappointing, sure, but looking back, that book taught me so much. It taught me how to pitch, what an agent looks for in a book, how to finish a full book, etc., and if I revisited it now, I would probably rewrite a lot of it, now that I’ve written more books.

Back to the Querying Trenches

At the beginning of 2024, my wonderful former agent told me she was leaving agenting. It was saddening (heartbreaking even?) because she had been a really great advocate. And perhaps I felt an extra closeness, because I had been her first client, and I had wanted her to succeed so much. Although my first book died on submission (which isn’t unusual), she was proactive, a great communicator, organized, a cheerleader—basically, everything you want in any business relationship! During the year I was on submission, I wrote another YA mystery, titled SEE BETWEEN THE LIES (68,000 words) and thankfully worked on edits with my former agent.

I queried it right away after getting released from our contract and receiving the official “okay.” During a pitch event, an editor from a medium-sized publisher showed interest in seeing my manuscript once I was agented!

The stats for SEE BETWEEN THE LIES:

93 queries sent
83 rejections
10 full requests
Offers: 0

I received a decent number of full requests, but ultimately, the book died in the querying trenches. After I realized it was dead, I took some much needed time to grieve the book.

But I moved on. I wrote my third YA mystery, titled KILL OR BE KILLED (63,000 words). I participated in PitchDis, QuestPit, LatinxPitch, and others over various platforms. I immediately received requests from PitchDis and LatinxPitch, among others, but cold querying also ultimately led to a big request rate for this book—and fast, too. I felt really great about this story and thought it was my best written YA mystery up to date!

But . . . it died too. Well, kind of—we’ll get there.

I received editor interest from a Big 5 publisher for this book right away, and this was by far the highest request rate out of all my books. At this point, I had been writing a book a year since 2021, gaining momentum, and I felt so close to getting an agent again. With this book, I even did my first R&R (revise and resubmit), where the agent wanted me to make my YA mystery older with new adult/adult crossover. I agreed with the edits and spent months revising. It didn’t go anywhere with that agent, but the edits made my writing stronger and helped me to grow my craft again. I couldn’t complain.

Sadly though, it (kind of) died in the trenches because no one offered when I was actively querying it.

Stats for KILL OR BE KILLED:

126 queries sent
109 rejections
15 full requests
2 partial requests
R&R: 1
Offers: 0 (*when I was actively querying this book)

Ultimately, when this one died, I focused on my latest book, titled NEARLY DEAD ALREADY (72,000 words), my first adult speculative murder mystery. I had never written in adult before, but I wanted to challenge myself, especially since my first agent had only represented kidlit. Plus, I thought, maybe it’d have an easier time in the trenches than YA (Was I deluding myself at least a little? Yep lol).

With my last YA and current adult book, I’d felt my writing had grown a lot, and I was proud!

I received more interest in pitch events for my adult than any other book I’d queried (16 agents total). An agent who’d had my full manuscript of my last YA reached out during both DVPit and QuestPit, noting she had my previous manuscript but wanted to consider my adult as well. I was honored and hopeful.

I meant to query immediately, but my chronic illness largely got in my way. I slowly queried these agents from pitch events first, with some a few months later, because my health had taken a turn for the worse and I had to involuntarily take a break from querying this book.

In December 2025, I found out my adult manuscript was a semi-finalist for the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards (which was crazy because I’d never even written in adult before), so of course I updated all my query letters to tell agents of this development. I took a break for the holidays, focusing on resting during my chronic illness flare and resumed querying full force in January 2026. I quickly noticed that the industry was a lot slower this time, so everything felt excruciatingly slow.

Because of this, I queried this book much slower, because for a good month, all I got were rejections (like multiple times a day), and it started to weigh on me. I wasn’t having “immediate” success like for any of my YAs. Maybe getting my first agent had been a fluke after all, I thought. I didn’t have any motivation to work on the next book. It also seemed like agents only wanted adult mysteries without speculative elements or YA speculative mysteries, which mine was neither. So, I took a break and focused on other shorter works. I felt burnt out on book writing and perpetually so close to getting rep, yet no offers.

By early April 2026, my stats were:

55 total queries sent out
4 total full requests (2 rejected at this point)
2 total partial requests (both rejected at this point)
16 agents from pitch events—many had never responded.

Even though I had sent way more queries out in the past and planned to still query more, I’ll be honest. It felt . . . bleak.

The Turning Point

And then, there was the sudden turning point. Publishing whiplash, if you will. A few months before the Sacramento Book Festival, I saw that the agent who had those two full manuscripts from pitch events (LatinxPitch for the YA and then DVPit and QuestPit for the adult book) would be attending this event on the Sacramento Book Festival event Instagram page. A lot of book events happen in Southern California or the Bay Area but never near my area farther up north, where trad publishing professionals come around.

So, maybe I was just a bit excited.

This agent happened to follow me on most of my social media, so I decided to shoot my shot and messaged her that I couldn’t wait to meet her at the event, as I lived close to the area. I thought, maybe she had a booth, and I could meet her in person.

She responded and said she’d love to connect and get coffee (which was so cool and more than I ever expected). She told me we could make plans when the event was closer. I agreed.

In the beginning of April, I reached out to softly remind this agent of our talks of meeting, and she expressed her continued enthusiasm.

As the day grew nearer, I thought about reaching out again to make concrete plans (but also didn’t want to come off like I was pestering her too much, so I thought perhaps waiting to as close as possible was key), but she beat me to the punch! She reached out to me two days before the event and asked for coffeehouse recs since I lived in the area and she was the one traveling. I let her know, and we picked a time in the morning the day of the book festival that weekend.

Before I knew it, it was April 19, 2026. I arrived, not really knowing what to expect. I didn’t expect an offer, but I still wanted to make a good impression, and maybe I could pick her brain, so I prepared some questions (more in a general sense). We immediately ordered, and the agent paid for my coffee, which was so kind! We sat down and chatted in general for a few minutes, before she started asking me about well, me as an author, my writer goals, my communication style, how I work, and about all my books. She told me about herself and her editorial vision for my adult book and what she loved about it. She fell in love with my writing, my voice, the characters, the concepts, and made sure to tell me this across both my YA and adult books. I asked her questions, and we chatted like we’d known each other longer than that day. Time flew by so quickly, and it was easy to talk to her.

Then, she told me, “So . . . surprise, this is an offer of representation.”

I was FLOORED. I hadn’t expected to walk in as an unagented writer and come out with an offer of rep. Sure, I had been previously agented, but I had never met an agent in person who offered. It was an extra special type of experience.

To be honest, I was a bit dazed for the better half of that day, mostly because I couldn’t believe it’d happened!

We decided to meet the next week over video call to go over more questions, any questions about the contract, etc., since she acknowledged she felt this offer was probably a bit of a surprise to me. She was professional and kind and willing to allow however long I needed to contact agents with my query and requests—everything I was seeking in an agent.

After the festival, I returned home and immediately notified all agents with my full manuscript and queries. The next morning, I woke up to some agents asking for the full or telling me they still wanted to consider my work and others kindly stepping aside. I contacted other clients who worked with this agent, and everyone said the same thing: they thought she was great . . . as I thought as well.

But I stuck with the two weeks’ standard of notifying other agents of my offer. I think it’s great practice to open your mind and let other agents throw their hat in the ring if they so choose. Plus, it’s good etiquette in the publishing world, and making further industry connections is fun!

I had a video call about a week later after the agent offered in person, and it just re-affirmed how lovely she seemed and how well we clicked.

The next two weeks after the initial offer was made were a bit anti-climactic with either silence, more kind step asides, or agents telling me they didn’t have enough time to read, so they were dropping out, which was fine, and it happens. I tried to stay open minded if someone else did offer, but deep down, I knew the first agent would be my agent.

Sooo, drum roll please for the big reveal . . .

I am so excited to announce that I am officially represented by Alex Land at Mad Woman Literary Agency! I think there’s something special about this story, that no, this wasn’t a call. This was getting to meet my future agent in person.

I have a literary agent! Now represented by Alex Land at Mad Woman Literary Agency!

The Takeaways

Getting my first agent took 6 weeks and from cold querying. She offered on my first (fully completed) YA novel (and wanted to rep all my kidlit books).

Getting my second agent took two years and from pitch events. She offered on my first adult novel (and wants to rep all my YA and adult books).

The first time I wrote a “How I Got My Agent” post, my advice was it only takes one yes and to keep going. That’s all still true, since only one agent offered again.

But my biggest takeaway from my journey this time is: shoot your shot. You never know what’ll happen because literally anything can.

Taken right before the Sacramento Book Festival with my (future) agent, Alex Land (left) and me (right) at a coffeeshop nearby, where she offered rep to me

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Connect With Me on Social Media:

Website: kellyesparza.com
Instagram/Threads: kelwritesbooks2
Twitter: Kelly_Esparza7
Bluesky: kellyesparza.bsky.social