Editors and Authors and Agents, Oh MY!

I’d like to introduce you to my favorite new person – Katie Sulkowski.

 

She’s an agent with Creative Trust in Nashville. Doesn’t she look smart? I’d describe her as HIGHLY intelligent, with excellent taste and a deep appreciation for great writing. I spoke with her for all of 15 minutes, but it was obvious. She was the person chosen to evaluate my 1st chapter. Guess how she liked it?

Yeah, that’s right- I got a “Great”, a “Ha-Ha” and a smiley face all in one margin! She also requested the full manuscript. I think I love her.

Afterwards, I was a little crazy. Here’s me, trying to look sane.

Uh…I look normal, right? Sane people often go into the bathroom and take self-portraits. It wasn’t like I was taking pictures of OTHER people in the bathroom. That would be creepy.

My roomie, Deborah Osgood got a great review also. Well, if you consider having an agent tell you that you write beautifully and that she wanted to recommend you for an award, a great review. Cay, “that’s-not-a-typo” Drew WOULD have gotten a good review, if she’d submitted anything. Next year I fully expect her to win big.

Have you heard of Jamie Miles or Deborah Mantella? Well, you will. Jamie writes a column every week for the newspaper in Madison.  It’s inspirational humor from a Main Street, USA point of view.   Deborah won an award at the conference last year. She gave me her 3 sentence pitch for her novel and it was GREAT. I liked them so much. Which is saying a lot since they were both really, really, good and beautiful, the type of people  I usually try to avoid.

You know what this is? No, it’s NOT an out-of-focus photo of Deborah. It’s a photo where I PRETEND to take a photo of Deborah, so I can show you how close I was sitting to the woman on the right side of the frame. That’s an editor from RANDOM HOUSE. One that is accepting submissions! I was elbow to elbow with her, close enough to TOUCH. She was very nice, but not real talkative.

I’m not sure why.