What a long, strange trip it's been. Agents and agony.

Okay, not so much agony but it looks freakin' awesome in the title.

After a weird week of two rejections days within each other and still waiting for my full to come full circle with another agent, I sent out the zombies one more time into the unknown to search for a great agent. They came back with a doozy. Less than an hour after I sent my query, she wrote back asking for the proposal -- then not long after that was sent (ALWAYS have your synopsis or proposal prepared before you query), she asked if we could chat the next day. I could tell from her email that she was excited about the project and that made me squee just a little bit more. Maybe I wasn't left to humming show tunes quietly to myself in a corner while I wrote about the Undead. Maybe, someone "got it."

Oh, she got it alright.

Within minutes of being on the phone, we were talking about Zombie Wars and children. Wha? Think they're mutually exclusive? Wait till you have five, my friend. I was very happy to accept her offer of representation later that afternoon.

A few things I picked up along the way to agenthood:

• For the love of god, read their website and what they represent. Save yourself a lot of time and energy by taking a minute to visit their site, agentquery.com and querytracker.com to see if you're even in the ballpark. Mistakes happen, the lure of a fantastic agent has led many a writer to fire off a query to an agent that wouldn't be the right fit. Spend that energy toward doing more research: twitter, blogs, google her and see if her style matches your own.
  
• Be prepared to MOVE when they ask to see something. Don't fiddlefart around, this isn't the time to do last-minute edits or stick in an extra scene. It's Business Time, baby. ;)
• Follow your instincts. I knew within minutes of talking to my agent (HAHAHAHA, sorry, it's still a little fresh) that we'd be a good match. If you're getting anything that says this:
  It's the universe's little way of telling you to keep looking.
• Never give up, never give in. They'll eventually cave. They all do. Oops, that's from the book -- nevermind.

Come and join The Zombie Dating Guide's new facebook fan page! And say hello to my new agent, Dawn Frederick, from Red Sofa Literary!