Disclaimer: While I worked hard for what I've achieved, my story is also one of a lot of luck and I can acknowledge that. Please do not compare your story to mine because each journey is not comparable to another.
Buckle in, kids, because I'm starting from the very beginning (I promise, it's all mostly relevant) of my journey as an author: my childhood. Yes, you heard that right, you're going to join me on this probably-too-long journey from a bright-eyed little islander to the now-agented author I am today.
To start off, I should probably introduce myself a bit.
Hello, lovely reader. My name is Juli (pronounced Hoo-lee, it was a name that was often butchered, having grown up in Canada). Why is my name so often butchered, you might ask? Well, because I was born into a family of Argentinian immigrants, my name isn't in English, but Spanish, so that little J confuses every English-speaker I've ever met, and understandably so.
Even though my entire family was born (and most were raised there as well) in Argentina, including my older sister, I was born and raised in Canada for my entire 20 years of life. Yes, I've visited my family in the south multiple times, but I grew up straddling two very different cultures: Argentinian and that of the heavily-Irish-influenced island I was raised in. To make things even less confusing (sarcasm, obviously), I am half Jewish and half Catholic as well, and bisexual, and the little city where I grew up was so lacking in diversity you barely found someone who wasn't from the province, let alone the country, so coming from a family of South American immigrants felt like a wholly unique experience to little me.
Basically, I really have been stuck in between two worlds in every aspect of my life for as long as I can remember, and that's usually echoed in my writing. Identity is still something I struggle with daily.
Growing up, my dad and I always shared a passion for anything science fiction or fantasy and, most importantly, anything dark. From books to TV shows and movies, we both consumed the genre to no end. I was always a voracious reader and even joint-wrote books with my older sister before I could even properly write by myself. The drawings I did were the true stars of the books, though, if I do say so myself.
After finishing up my days at elementary school, I would hunker down to my basement where our family desktop computer sat, and I'd write what I claimed to be a novel. Our first evidence of my attempts at writing a novel by myself was in Kindergarten when I took one of my school journals and began a book so lovingly titled "Life is Rough".
What, exactly, made life so rough at the ripe age of five, I will never know.
I was obsessed with the Hunger Games at the age of nine, and had moved onto darker adult fantasy by the time I was in middle school, becoming increasingly annoyed with the amount of romantic fantasy being coined as somehow dark and gritty fantasy in the YA genre. I had always written for myself or for school projects, but I had never shown it to anyone.
Then, at the age of 15, I discovered the online site that was Wattpad. Now, I know what you're thinking, but hear me out. From my account's very inception, I wrote original fiction (not fanfiction, which is surprising knowing 15-year-old me) and I found some decent success on the site. (I have since taken down all my work on the site so no one can read those horrendous dumpster fires, so good luck trying).
A mess of a 120K YA superhero "novel" was the first book idea I'd ever completed from start to finish, and I started and finished it while I was on Wattpad at 15 or 16 years old. From there, I went on to write three and a half more books. Now, I had never rewritten, never edited, only ever written first drafts, and abandoned them for the next idea, so I still had (and have) a way to go as a writer.
In the middle of my third book, just last March when I was turning 19, a friend told me about #PitMad, so I joined Twitter to see what it was all about. From there, my knowledge of the writing world absolutely exploded, and so when I had the idea for the novel I'm now agented because of, I knew I wanted to try querying it.
Now, a combination of my scientific background and my fear of failure caused the deepest of deep dives into what querying was, how you did it properly, how to write a query letter, etc. But, after an abysmal Organic Chemistry midterm, I knew my true joy in this life was writing, so I applied to an editor job (my current job) and an exclusive creative writing diploma program alongside my major.
When I got both, I had a tiny uptick of belief in myself. Maybe I really could do this?
I'm a full-time science major with two editing jobs, so I wrote sparingly, but still got the first draft finished very quickly when looking at the amount of time I had to work on it. For reference, I started last August and finished the first draft that same year's December.
By March of the new year and my 20th birthday, I had heavily rewritten based on beta and CP feedback, and at the end March, began to query. What else happened in the middle of this? I heard about RevPit, a competition that gave you a chance to win a professional editor's help and be in a showcase, so I thought "why not?" and hit send.
Less than two weeks after I sent my first queries, and starting off strong with mostly requests, I received some very harsh news the morning of the RevPit announcement. I went on Twitter, congratulated the winners early, not knowing who they were, and sat with my family to process this harsh news we'd received.
At a time when I was feeling at my worst, my phone started going off crazily. I see that they're all Twitter notifications, so I naturally need to check what all the commotion was about. And on that very same harsh, horrible day, I also received some amazing news.
The amazing news? I had somehow managed to win a spot in RevPit.
So, I hit pause on my querying journey, and worked with my fantastic mentor, Jeni Chapelle (seriously, if you need an editor, she's incredible) to really polish my book and help it shine. While the showcase was in June, I finished my final edits on nearly the first of August, and sent out some more queries and the fulls/partials people were waiting on as well as the RevPit requests I felt confident about.
And then, I waited. Only a month, really, but I got a handful of full manuscript rejections, some query rejections, and almost no new requests. Now, in the long run, I had so many more agents to query, but I had prepared myself for the worst case scenario and I began to spiral in those few weeks.
My book was dark, based in cultural history and social order, and had strong themes of bodily autonomy, religious trauma, and chronic pain, among other very serious topics. Aside from being very heavily culturally inspired on a thematic and content level, I also used a braided narrative story structure, which is somewhat uncommon in the Western market. It was queer, too, and specifically sapphic, which we know gets the least attention from the media nowadays.
I began to worry that, like so many amazing marginalized authors before me, my book just wouldn't fit into the Western market. It was too ethnic. Too culturally-heavy. Too queer. Too confusing to be following two separate plot lines for the majority of the book. Too personal.
Now, most of my full rejections had some sort of praise attached, and some were even gushing, but most were along the lines of not falling in love with it. They complimented and even gushed about my plot, my world-building, my writing in of itself, my characters, but they just weren't in love.
Not in love. Such a small set of words, but ones that I saw so often, and barely ever wanted to hear again. My plot I could fix. My characters? Sure! But I couldn't change whether an agent loved it or not.
I was so confused, because how could I possibly fix that? Nearly no one was having problems with the book, itself, and somehow it made me more hopeless than less, because I was afraid I would never find my match. I was afraid that no matter how ready the book was, perhaps it was a bit too personal. A bit too centered around my own experiences. Experiences that weren't quite widely shared, from the structure of the plot to the stories every word told, especially in the Western world of literature.
Still, it was disheartening to realize that a story so near and dear to my heart, so heavy on my shoulders, could collect dust in a computer folder not because it wasn't good enough, but because that's where the game of luck in this industry steps in. It had to hit the right agent's inbox at the right time and cling onto their mind so viciously that they had no choice but to offer, and that was feeling less and less likely.
It was inevitably going to die in the query trenches, and then how could I put my soul out there again?
I knew I would keep writing, because writing is a necessity for me, but I knew I would have to write for myself for a while. I knew that someday I would need to get back on the querying horse, but wasn't sure when that someday would be.
Needless to say, I was pretty doom and gloom about it all, even if the numbers didn't back up such an extreme reaction (but I blame my depression and anxiety for that gem). I wish my rational side could win most of the time, but that's simply not the case.
My self-doubt was increasing to the point where it was crushing me.
Then, I woke up one morning to a response on a full request. Fully expecting a rejection, I sleepily opened my phone and was hit with an email about the legendary "The Call". When I tell you no alarm clock has woken me up faster than my groggy eyes reading that email still half asleep, I'm absolutely telling you the truth.
The first thing I did that morning was contact the agent, agree on a time, and meet with them that very same weekend. Inside, I still couldn't believe it. When we had that fantastic call, it was an offer, and I think I nearly cried on multiple occasions as this amazing agent gushed about my book and talked about editors and imprints I had never even fathomed I could reach.
My dream was finally becoming real.
So, after that, I nudged all of my outstanding queries and those that had any of my material. Still, you can ask my parents, but they had to remind me to keep my mind open to other options since I was so beguiled by this agent and their love and understanding of my book. There was just this instant connection that I knew would be so difficult to match, let alone supersede, and I was right!
I'm so so SO excited to say that I am officially agented by the wonderful Keir Alekseii at Azantian Literary Agency and that we'll be going on sub with my debut, BALLADS CAGED IN BONE, in the next few months.
Here are my query stats. I've hidden them in case anyone wants to read this and finds query stats triggering. For any fellow science peeps or data nerds, it is heavily broken down, so I'm sorry if it's too detailed and very long, but if I'm going to give data, it'll be as detailed as possible!
Final Query Stats
Since I feel like my journey has three distinct phases, I've separated my stats into those phases, that way you can compare them, and then an overall analysis.
Pre-RevPit
Adult Grimdark Fantasy, 118K
Queries Sent: 7
Query Rejections: 4
CNR: 0
Partial Requests: 2
Partials-to-Fulls: 1
Fulls from Query: 1
Total Fulls: 2
Full/Partial Rejections: 0
R&Rs: 0
Request Rate: 43%
Offers: 0
Post-RevPit
Adult Grimdark Fantasy, 121K
RevPit Requests: 5
RevPit Requests Sent: 3
Queries Sent: 22
Query Rejections: 7
CNR: 0
Partial Requests: 3
Partials-to-Fulls: 2
Fulls from Query: 3
Total Fulls: 5
Full/Partial Rejections: 3
R&Rs: 1
Offers: 1
Request Rate (including RevPit requests not sent): 42%
Request Rate (excluding RevPit requests not sent): 36%
Post-Nudge
Adult Grimdark Fantasy, 121K
Queries Sent: 0
Query Rejections: 3
Referrals: 1
Ghosted on materials: 1
CNR: 1
Partial Requests: 1
Partials-to-Fulls: 0
Fulls from Query: 4
Total Fulls: 8
Step Asides: 10
R&Rs: 1
Request Rate: 70%
Offers: 0
Overall
Adult Grimdark Fantasy, 121K
Queries Sent + RevPit Requests Sent: 32
Query Rejections: 14
Ghosted on materials: 1
Referrals: 1
CNR: 1
Partial Requests: 4
Partials-to-Fulls: 2
Fulls from Query: 11
Total Fulls: 13
Full/Partial Rejections/Step Asides: 15
R&Rs: 2
Request Rate: 53%
Offers: 1
Total Time Querying: 6 months (including RevPit, during which I wasn't querying)
Total Time Actively Querying Before Offer of Rep: 2.5 months
Books Shelved: 0
So, now, I am happily agented with the amazing Keir Alekseii at Azantian Literary Agency, and hope to be a published author! I'll be updating my journey as needed, but for now, this is where I'm at.
Did I work hard to write a book I was proud of and get an agent? Yes. Was I also extremely lucky to land an agent? Yes. And do many talented authors not get an agent on the first book simply because of luck and bad timing with market trends? Also yes.
I achieved a fantastic thing, but it was also greatly impacted by the luck of the game, so don't get too down on yourself. Sometimes it takes multiple books over multiple years. My story is just one journey, so don't try to compare it to yours or anyone else's.
So excited to see where this all takes me!
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