Landed an agent…At last.

📣Popping the cork! 🍾🥂

As of Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021, I signed with Steve Ross Agency to represent my novel project. Just so happens that day was also my late mother’s 95th birthday. Mrs. Irene Gaines Jones was always a champion for her daughters; encouraging us to nurture our artist. She did the same for students, mentees and anyone else who touched her aura. It’s no small thing to have support from your parents when you choose none traditional career paths. For that, I am eternally grateful.

After 14 years working on Peach Seed Monkey—writing, researching, endless editing, and querying; finding an agent has been a long time coming. But like many things, once it started happening, it happened fast. I am so lucky to have found Steve Ross to partner with me in getting my manuscript dressed, as Steve says, “in its Sunday best” for the next phase of this exhausting process: finding a publisher. I can’t even tell you what a relief it is to hand off that task to someone so capable. Steve has my dream agent trifecta: years of publishing industry experience, editing prowess and respect.

This story began on January 17, 2020, that time so long ago B.C. (Before COVID) when none of us had a clue what was waiting just a few weeks ahead. In 2019, I had begun querying in earnest. My manuscript was (once again) at a place where I wanted to throw up if I looked at it. It was time for distance. With the major writing conference, AWP2019/Seattle, behind me and AWP2020/San Antonio a few weeks ahead, I continued mining Publishers Marketplace (PM) for possible agents to populate my query spreadsheet. In PM’s Deals section, I spotted fantastic news: my dear friend, author A.J. Verdelle, had landed a deal for her upcoming book, Miss Chloe: A Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison, due out in September 2021! I sent big congrats to A.J., and followed my standard protocol for a book by any Black woman getting published in America: I searched PM for three names: agent/editor/publisher. Since most publishers do not take unsolicited manuscripts, I was most interested in the agent, which happened to be Steve Ross. This was clearly not the time to contact A.J. and ask if she would recommend me to her agent. She was caught up in the wonderment of getting her new book between covers. I moved ahead with a cold query, following Steve Ross’ submission criteria.

Let’s jump back to 2012. I had been working on the manuscript for five years (which had started out as a screenplay—another story for a mother time!). This was the first of many times that I needed distance from those pages. I had sense enough to pause —before my writing turned to iron—and hire a gifted editor. Here I was, living in Marin County, a mostly white, affluent area north of San Francisco, being way more picky about this editor than I had a right to be: I wanted a Black woman with connections to the Deep South so that we could speak a short hand. And I already mentioned the gifted part. Miraculously, a YouTube video of Nikky Finney’s astonishing 2011 acceptance speech for the National Book Award for her book of poetry, Head off and Split, lead me to AJ. I had a lot to learn about the technique of writing fiction, but AJ found my story compelling, (what this writer lacked in craft, was made up for in story), and told me, “technique can be taught”. Up until that time, when it came to my novel, I had been listening to the choir. AJ was the first person to read the manuscript who wasn’t a friend or family member (let’s face it, folks, those people love you too much to break your heart). She had nothing vested except the quest to help a worthy story find its best self. Her willingness to take on the project was the validation I desperately needed. We would work together off and on for about five years.

Now, back to March 2, 2020, B.C.—about six weeks after I sent the cold query to Steve Ross. He actually replied! Something about my cover letter, synopsis and first 10 pages, prompted him to ask for the first 50 pages. A writer can’t ask for more of any query. I sent the pages the next day.

And then. COVID hit New York very hard.

I attended a truncated version of AWP/San Antonio and made a trip back home to southwest Georgia. Returned to California on March 17, the first day of lockdown. I reached out to Steve on March 23 and he replied immediately saying he felt as if they were “in the belly of the beast”. Indeed. Bookstores were closing, the publishing industry, like every thing else, faced uncertainty and turmoil.

Summer approached and I teetered on the edge of an abyss that was saying my novel might very well die from the coronavirus. One thing kept me going: the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. This prize, started by Barbara Kingsolver in 2000, is awarded every other year, and luckily, was open for submissions in spite of the doom and gloom all around us. I skipped the abyss and immersed instead into yet another editing pass, since it had been a few months since I touched the pages. On August 14th, (just before throwing up into the Submittable portal), I sent the manuscript off to PEN/Bellwether. In August 2020 alone, the U.S. reported over 29,000 COVID deaths; we couldn’t go to the grocery store without a mask, couldn’t visit friends and family; wiped down every product that entered our kitchen; George Floyd’s public lynching pushed racial tensions to a fever-pitch, and we had THE presidential election of a lifetime looming large. There was so, so much to feel bad about. In the midst of all I couldn’t do, I uttered a quiet, “Oh happy day,” like a prayer, because I could park my manuscript with the contest judges for three months and hold onto some kind of hope.

On March 2, 2021, PEN/Bellwether announced the winner: congrats again to Jamila Minnicks Gleason for her novel, Hydrangeas of New Jessup. My manuscript, Peach Seed Monkey, made it into the Top Ten Finalists. What had turned into a six-month wait was worth it, and I was thrilled to say the least. That same day, I’m forever grateful to A.J. for taking the time to reach out to Steve Ross to tell him about my project. Even though she had omitted my name, because he trusts her implicitly, Steve said he’d be delighted to take a look at my full manuscript. Since he did not know who this mysterious writer was, I waited a few days and emailed Steve directly to remind him that we had in fact connected last year B.C.

And so began our literary “courtship”! (truly does feel that way!) Steve remembered our previous correspondence, was shocked to find I was the same person, and eager to read the full manuscript, which I sent immediately. About two weeks later, he replied with enthusiasm and I was awestruck. He showed such respect for me as a writer, for the writing itself and clearly understood what I set out to do with the story. After so many varying degrees of rejection, I could hardly believe Steve’s level of altruism and his skill as an editor. This all came through in his beautifully crafted email letters. He discussed my characters and their problems as if they were folks he and I knew in common. And more importantly, he offered me representation. During the early days of celebrating this news, I thought of my other: when the young folk she took under her wings would thank her, she’d say, “You don’t have to thank me. Some day my girls will need help and some one will be there for them, too.” Ms. Irene, as my mother was loving known, was paying it forward long before hashtags. Because of her tenacious spirit, remaining present, somewhere in the entangled emotions I still feel at continuing to nurture my art when people are dying of police violence and COVID-19, I believe my story belongs in the conversation. Instead of death by COVID-19, the time is right for my story to be born. Fortunately, Steve Ross believes that, too.

Over the years I’ve written many posts about serendipitous signs along the way that I never take lightly. In the end, when things moved very quickly, this story falls into that same category. When Bellwether announced on March 2, and A.J. reached out to Steve, it had been one year to the day that he requested the 50 pages. As Steve wrote a year later, “I am still almost breathless from the incredibly circular way things works out sometimes!”

To that I say, “Catch your breath, Steve. That’s just the way Ms. Irene rolls!”