So I Got An Agent, And He's A Good One

While hunting for an agent, I would occasionally ponder just how ludicrous this whole “traditional publishing” thing was.
“Selling a book isn’t your first major milestone,” I told Gini.  “So you’d think that ‘getting an agent’ would be your first major milestone, but no!  It isn’t!  ‘Having an agent ask to look at your book’ is.  And think about that!  There’s sad authors who go whole careers without even having an agent ask to look at their work.
“Only in this business, man,” I muttered.  “Only in this business is getting someone to read the first three chapters of your book considered to be a major triumph.”
But it is, really.  Authors speak in hushed tones of “the partial” – and, God willing, “She asked for the full manuscript.”  Now, this is usually code for “The agent will spend four months pondering it, only to tell you very kindly that it’s not for them,” but that’s not the point.  The point is that getting someone to look at your book means that you’ve escalated your game to a certain level!  Lots of people don’t get that far.
Sad?  True.  The two go together, like peanut butter and chocolate.
So when I got the contract in the mail announcing that Evan Gregory of the Ethan Ellenberg Agency had indeed signed me as his client, thus vaulting me to the next step of the trad-pub game, I couldn’t have been happier. Actually, that’s a lie.  As y’all know, I’d been in a depressive slump, so while I was super-happy, I also approached the happiness like a distrustful stray cat, waiting for a boot to be chucked at me.  Even today, I keep re-reading those emails with a wary eye, as though on further examination they might turn out to be from some helpful Nigerian prince who will help me transfer his fortune into my bank account.
But dudes.  Done deal.  And now Evan begins the haul of schlepping my books about to publishers, which means God willing I will have news for you at some point.  This stuff takes weeks, months, years.  And even more luck.
And I schmeared this news all over Twitter yesterday, but that felt too ephemeral.  I know some day I’ll want to look through my archives so I can ask, “When did I first get an agent?”  And here will be this blog post, telling me. Reassuring me that shit actually happened.
As a first step, it’s a pretty darned good one.