CHILDREN’S: MIDDLE GRADE
Jessica Burkhart’s HIGH JUMPS AT COLLINS ACADEMY series, pitched as Saddle Club meets Mean Girls, about a small-town girl who attends a boarding school and must learn to compete with the equestrian elite, to Molly McGuire at Aladdin, in a four-book deal, in a very nice deal, by Alyssa Eisner Henkin at Trident Media Group (NA).
Hello everyone!
My lovely and fabulous agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin at Trident Media Group has given me the go ahead to share some super-exciting news that we have been working on over the past week.
My first young adult novel has been shopped to publishers and has received immediate and outstanding interest from a couple of major publishing houses! I will be weighing offers over the next week and will certainly keep you all updated when I make a decision for the right publisher for my book.
I am incredibly grateful to Alyssa for making this happen and I couldn’t have done it without her!! 🙂 She is the dream agent and has been an outstanding partner through all of this.
This is an absolute dream and I cannot believe I will see my book in print! I’ve been itching to share this news with my blogging family and I hope you’re as excited as I am.
I look foward to keeping you all updated with details as they come in and I wish everyone a lovely holiday weekend!
Flashback 12! Signing with my first agent
So, here’s the deal.
I have been biting my tongue for a couple of weeks now because I’ve been bursting to tell everyone who reads my blog some big news. As many of you know, I started looking for an agent in January for my YA manuscript. Well, after 3 query letters, I’m beyond pleased to report that I have signed with a brilliant, lovely NYC agent!! At this time, I cannot release the agency’s name or the name of my agent, but I assure you that it’s an amazing place and I can’t wait to reveal the name at a later date.
I’m going to be working harder than ever and will keep everyone updated on my manuscript’s progress. It has been SO hard not to share this with my blogging and writing friends, but I finally felt ready to do so.
The moral of the story- if you want something, you CAN make it happen!
On Friday, I received a request from an agent for my full manuscript of Freshman 15**. Luckily, the agent requested it via e-mail and I was able to send it off within hours of receiving the request. I had to sign a release form and that will be on it’s way to NYC tomorrow. It was incredibly exciting to have another request for a full. Hopefully, I’m not the only one who thinks my manuscript is good. 🙂 In the short time that I’ve been querying agents, I’ve learned a good deal of info. I’ve spent days researching agencies, what’s “hot” in publishing, why not to follow what’s hot in publishing, scary stats of how many authors publish his/her first book and bios of editors and agents. Before I query any agent, I try to get all of the necessary stats (college attended, hobbies, clients) and always attempt to tie something of that sort into my query. Does it help? Who knows.
**This was the original title of Take the Reins when it was a YA 🙂
Jessica Burkhart 