It’s funny how life works. I’ve been planning for some months now to get back on track with this newsletter and update you on all the wonderful things that have been happening with my books, and I was going to do that by talking about every agonizing (and yet educational) step in the publishing process. One of those steps, perhaps the most critical for many authors, is securing an agent to represent you to publishers, to sell your books to them, to speak and advocate for you, to mentor you and be your friend.
I signed with my agent four years ago, during that first, ugly year of the pandemic. I was lucky to get her. The search for literary agents is not for those prone to fainting spells. It’s often a full-blown horror flick. Many authors can recount dozens and dozens or even hundreds of rejection letters from agents, and many quit trying as a result. My agent almost fell in my lap. Because I had had the good sense to invest in a quality private editor ahead of my submissions, I was able to leverage that relationship in my agent quest. My editor had worked at publishing houses, still maintained relationships with many people in the industry, and allowed me to use her name when sending out query letters.
When Janet Reid contacted me at the beginning of November, 2020, she did so with a caveat: “Give me three months to read your manuscript,” she said. “I’m swamped.” Her estimate turned out to be way off—she emailed me three weeks later and told me she had already finished the book. “I have to represent you,” she said. “I have to.” Then on our first real phone call, she said the greatest thing to me: “I’m only going to say this once, and then you’ll never hear me say it again. I think you’re a great writer. But it’s not my job to keep telling you that. My job is to stand over you with a whip and make you write.”
She was telling me not what I wanted to hear but what I needed to hear. She was true to her word. In the three-and-a-half years since, she’s never spent time stroking my ego. Her infrequent compliments are more to relate what important book reviewers and other people in the industry are saying about my work. She is more concerned with focusing on how she can help me better understand what is coming down the pike and on how to become a better writer. She sends me books of every fashion, from established and promising authors, especially if she believes we share a certain style. I’ve never walked away from a check-in with her feeling anything less than a sense of tremendous relief in the knowledge that I was in her capable hands.
Janet dispenses psychology like Lucy at her booth in the Peanuts cartoon, with blunt honesty, extreme confidence, and sardonic humor, though she never charges the five cents Lucy does. She gives of her very valuable time, blogging to would-be authors on how to navigate the minefield of the Big Five, the lords of traditional publishing. She coaches aspiring novelists on how to effectively approach people like her with a single page pitch about their books. She has helped thousands.
She died this week.
It was a brief illness. I don’t know the details. She was a private person. Though we spoke regularly on the phone, we never had the chance to meet face-to-face. It might seem odd that I could feel this close to someone I never met, but I do. I did. The only thing I can liken it to is talking to God, which I’m often reminded by some very close friends carries that same sense of peace and complete trust.
We all know the tired trope—it’s who you know, not what you know that’s important. And every year that goes by, running on a treadmill that only speeds up and watching those important to me fall away, I’m reminded how true that is and of just how precious time can be. I have learned so much from Janet that I could probably fill another book with Reid-isms, advice for conquering the universe and prophetic pearls, none of which are fit to print. If, however, we find ourselves having a beer or two in some hotel bar someday, I will be happy to share them with you. She would like that, I think.
This is my update. She made it all possible.
Rest in peace, my dear friend. And thank you.