I tried for almost ten years to get an agent, which you can read about on the blog I wrote for Sisters in Crime this week. Finally, after writing three other books, Till the Cows Come Home caught one agent’s attention. I had several “Can I please see the first 30 pages” requests, but only one agent who wrote back after seeing the whole manuscript said “Yes! I want to represent it!”

Now, I was an eager, impatient author at that point (after trying for an agent for a decade) so I didn’t do the necessary homework. I accepted his offer immediately, and was pleased as punch to say I had an agent.

The problem was…he sent the manuscript to five editors, decided I wasn’t going to make him a million bucks, and dumped me. Of course he didn’t say that’s why he dumped me. He told me that “Because of a personal family matter, I am being forced to curtail my list of authors,” and I was one of them.

So I cried for a day or two, and then got back on the horse. I began sending out query letters again (which held its own problems – did I say I had an agent for the book before, or not?) and also started researching publishers. I had some requests for chapters, but nothing that became a contract. Meanwhile, I discovered Poisoned Pen Press, which was quickly making a name for itself in the mystery world. They were (and still are) one of the few mystery houses who accept submissions from non-agented writers. They liked my book, and after a few changes published it, with my contract stating they had options on book #2.

Meanwhile, my friend Lorraine Bartlett had written a wonderful book called Murder on the Mind, and I had the good fortune to be one of her trusted readers. It was a wonderful book and I was thrilled when she found an agent. At Malice Domestic that year, I saw that agent, introduced myself as a friend of Lorraine’s, and told her how pleased I was that she took on Lorraine as a client.

After that I wrote another book (not a Stella one) and contacted that agent, reminding her that I’d met her at Malice. She read the manuscript, said she wasn’t excited about it, but that she loved Till the Cows Come Home, which she had read since it was nominated for the Agatha and Anthony awards, and would be interested in being my agent for that series. So after some research this time, I was happy to sign with her. She worked on my next contract with Poisoned Pen, which was a three-book deal.

After which, she told me she was retiring from the business.

Augh!

She was a very nice woman, but now I regret having signed with her. I could’ve saved myself the 15% commission by signing with Poisoned Pen myself (seeing how I trust them completely), especially since the agent did nothing else for me. She now collects 15% off of everything I make on those books, for doing not much of anything.

But that’s how the business goes.

So…I am presently unagented, which is fine, since I have a relationship with Poisoned Pen and have already discussed a new mystery series with the editor. Another new book, Lost Sons, will be coming out from Herald Press, an imprint of the Mennonite Publishing Network, next month, another small press that I was able to approach unagented, and seemed a perfect place for this book.

But I am also working on some other things that I would like to see go to a big house – namely a juvenile fantasy and a women’s fiction book – and I will look for an agent for those when I am ready. Poisoned Pen and Herald Press are wonderful, but they don’t publish those genres!

So there you have it. Agents can be great, but they can also be a stumbling block. I’m lucky the first guy didn’t do more than just dump me, and I did at least have a positive relationship with the second one. A “funny” note — I’ve talked with other authors who had the misfortune of signing with the same guy I had first — seems they also got letters saying he had a “family matter” which was forcing him to drop authors. So either this guy has a lot of family crises, or he’s just a big, fat liar. I know which I believe.

From now on I will be extremely careful when signing with anyone, and I hope that the rest of you writers are, too. Because — as Casey said yesterday — a bad agent is worse than no agent at all.