How I Found My Agent (Or, How My Agent Found Me)

I never meant for Love Me Stalk Me to be anything more than the story I needed to tell.

It started as an idea that just wouldn’t leave me alone. It kept me up at night and followed me throughout my day. It basically harassed me until I sat down and started writing it and then when I did, it just poured out of me. These characters had something to say and I needed to hear it. What I didn’t expect was how much of myself I’d pour back into them. My own struggles, my questions about relationships and vulnerability and what it means to let someone see you completely.

(Successful Queries.)

When I finished, I showed it to a few trusted friends. They read it and came back with the same message: “You need to publish this.”

So I decided to go indie. I had an idea for a cover design and shared my vision with a cover designer who made it even better. When the cover reveal happened I posed it on social media the way most authors do these days. What I didn’t expect was to get an email from a book scout in New York City.

She’d seen the cover and wanted to know more about the book and asked if I’d be willing to send her the manuscript. I’ll admit I actually had to look up what a book scout does. Turns out they are people who keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s coming next. They alert foreign publishers and literary agents about books that might interest them.

I sent her the manuscript and tried to play it cool. Indie publishing was still the plan. Then she emailed me back saying she’d read it and loved it and she had some contacts who might be interested and I’d probably be hearing from people soon.

Then I received an email from my now agent, Kimberly Whalen at The Whalen Agency, asking if I could also send her a copy to consider. I did and once again tried to play it cool. Internally I was combusting.

Kimberly and I set up a call and everything clicked. We talked about my vision for the book and my author journey and how we could work together. Before I knew it, I was signed with an agent I never queried. But not just any agent, Kimberly is literally THE agent and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Here’s what I learned from this experience: Sometimes the best thing you can do is write the book only you can write. Love Me Stalk Me wasn’t strategic. I didn’t write it with the market in mind or try and fit it into a specific box. I wrote it because I had to. Because these characters gave me a safe space to process my own mess. Even now, the idea that so many people are already reading this book makes me feel very vulnerable and that scares me.

But that vulnerability was exactly what made it work.

Now I'm doing it again with book two, Hate Me Take Me. This time I'm processing my abandonment issues through a completely different character, exploring what it means to be left behind and how we protect ourselves from that pain. Look, I should probably go back to therapy. I might eventually, but in the meantime, I'm writing it into books. And I feel incredibly lucky that I get to explore these internal experiences through fiction, that I have characters who can carry these heavy things and transform them into something that might resonate with readers who are struggling with the same issues.

When you write from that raw, honest place, when you're willing to dig into the uncomfortable truths and let your characters struggle with real things, something shifts. The writing becomes authentic in a way that readers can feel. They recognize themselves in it. They connect to it. Readers notice and apparently, book scouts and agents notice too.

I'm not saying the traditional querying path doesn't work. It absolutely does, and most authors will find their agents that way. Would Love Me Stalk Me have found its way to Kimberly eventually through traditional querying? Maybe. But I also know that if I'd played it safe, if I'd written something less vulnerable and more “marketable,” Kimberly might never have heard about it.

The unconventional path taught me something crucial: Trust your own story. Write what matters to you, even when it feels risky. Especially when it feels risky.

Because somewhere out there, someone is looking for exactly what you have to say.

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