Tuesday From The Trenches: Layla Hersch

Hello wonderful readers, and welcome to Tuesday From The Trenches! I am super sorry that I'm coming to you so late today. It was a wild day and I don't even know where to begin to tell you about it, so instead, I will just say thank you for understanding.

I am SO thrilled to welcome Layla Hersch to the blog today. Layla is an absolute gem. I am lucky to call her my agent sibling and I have truly enjoyed getting to know her over the last year. She is truly a wonderful human being and this journey is so great! Make sure to catch her generous offer at the end for one lucky MG writer!

Hi Layla! Thank you so much for joining us today! I’m thrilled to share your story with my readers, and always love when a Tuesday From The Trenches post also lets me gush about Emily and my agent siblings!

Can you share your query stats with us?

YAY!! Huge congratulations. You and Emily are such a great match! So, how did you keep track of it all? What was your method for organizing queries? Spread sheet? Query Tracker?

So I am probably going to sound like pure chaotic evil here, but I actually just jotted it down in the back of a notebook I use for work! It’s really messy and jumps around and I have notes scribbled in the margins to remind me when to nudge and such. Somehow I managed to keep track of it all!

Hahaha. I actually super love that!! Whatever works, right?

How did you handle rejections? Did any sting more than others?

I wish I could say that I breezed through every rejection! I have been writing my entire life, and queried other projects on and off before. My last novel, I queried from June 2019 to December 2020, and out of ~60 queries I got one partial and one full – both passes.

When I queried YOUNG BLOOD, I got my first full request 3 days after sending out my very first query, so I knew I was onto something special! At first, the rejections didn’t bother me the slightest bit because I kept getting SO many fulls. Out of my first batch of queries, I got four full requests. It was very dizzying.

One of the fulls turned into a revise and resubmit, but they had really great suggestions and I still felt very positive. But then the fulls started to turn into passes, and that sting really started to hurt. I started to realize that there’s still no guarantee of finding an agent, no matter how many full requests you get.

I love the difference you point out between your first go in the query trenches and your second. I love those hints that you're on the right path when you start getting those requests and positive feedbacks. But I also feel you on the pain of rejection... Sometimes, I think it hurts even more when there are so many positives, because you get your hopes up and then the passes feel extra hard. I'm so glad you kept with it though, and I hope our readers see that getting requests for fulls (or more MSs in Picture Books) really does mean you're on the right track.

How did you find agents to query/how did you decide who to query?

One of the big ones was through Twitter! As I said, I had been querying before, and I follow a lot of agents on Twitter. I already had some people in mind that I wanted to query before YOUNG BLOOD was even finished! I also searched through MSWL, which really was an invaluable tool! But also? I just googled “Literary agent + middle grade + spooky + vampires” and found a few that way, too!

I love all of that! Twitter is such a good way to get to know an agent's personality. And such a good idea to Google so specifically. I hadn't thought of that, and it's fabulous advice! So between all of those different places you looked, how did you ultimately connect with Emily? Did you cold query? Participate in a twitter pitch event? Or connect in some other way?

It was a cold query! A friend suggested that I query her because “vampire enthusiast” was in her bio, but my query was ultimately a cold query through Query Manager like anyone else!

YES! I love hearing about cold query success stories. So once you queried, how much time passed before getting “the call”?

3 days!

It sounds incredible, but Emily asked for my full only 13 minutes after I sent her my query, and three days after that asked to set up a call!

WOAH! That is amazing, Layla! I think 13 minutes is some kind of record. For real. I love that Emily connected so quickly and got so excited. Can you tell us more about “the call" and how you knew Emily was the right choice?

It might sound strange, but I knew that Emily was “the one” because she shared ideas on what we would need to edit. Another agent who had offered thought my book was perfect as is. A younger me would have been flattered beyond belief, so years of querying and failing taught me to be critical of that. Emily had some incredibly insightful ways to make my book shine – and even though it required a literal rewriting of my entire book – I knew the hard work was worth it.

That is such a wonderful thing to highlight. I think an agent who believes in a project, but can see how it could be even better is golden. And I love that you were willing to do such a substantial re-write. Could you tell us a little about that book?

YOUNG BLOOD is the story about two vampire brothers, who have two very different ideas on what being a vampire should be. Adam wants to use his strengths to help track down a murderer who’s arrived to his small, PNW town, but big brother Victor would much rather act like the big-bad (and cool) vampires he sees in movies. When Adam discovers the murderer is actually a vampire hunter who is killing innocent mortals as bait to lure him and his family, he knows he has to put a stop to it – with or without Victor’s help. It just doesn’t help matters that Victor has developed a taste for young blood and would do almost anything for the murders to continue.

YOUNG BLOOD is a love letter to vampires. But this is not your typical vampire story; it’s a rebuttal. Aiming to challenge our notion of monster stories and evil creatures, the middle grade novel places the humans in the role of predator. Many of my influences on how to build this mythos came from my Jewish background—even down to being accused of drinking blood!—and struggling with negative stereotypes or pressures to feel uncomfortable in your own identity.

Oh, Layla, it sounds absolutely incredible! Every time I hear more about your book, I cannot wait to get my hands on it! And thank you for being so open and honest about your experience and influences for this book. I know your book is going to be such a bright spot of truth!

If you could give querying authors a piece of advice, what would that be?

The dream is bigger than the pain.

It HURTS to query. To create a world that’s filled with little pieces of your soul and find out that it’s not good enough. It feels so easy to give up, to avoid that. But your dream is seriously bigger than that pain.

That is such great advice. I am going to remember that one for sure. The dream is bigger than the pain. So good.

Where can we connect with you online?

I am on Twitter at @LaylaHersch and at laylahersch.com

Thanks so much for joining us today, Layla! I’ve had a blast chatting and learning more about your journey. I am super excited for YOUNG BLOOD and can't wait to see what else you create.

GIVEAWAY OPPORTUNITY!

Layla is generously offering a 5 page critique to one lucky Middle Grade author. Simply follow Layla on twitter and retweet THIS tweet!

About Layla Hersch

Layla Hersch (she/her) is a middle grade fiction author. Her life has been filled with some incredible journeys - from being a punk rock hitchhiker living on top of buildings to an ancient book conservator apprentice at the Adler Planetarium to living in a college learning Arabic to being a drill sergeant (don't worry, she's gone the Bob Ross route of post-drill sergeant life) She loves infusing her works with Judaism, and adores monsters when they aren't being used as stand ins for society's fears of the other. Originally from Chicago, she has traveled all over the United States and the world -living for three years in Italy! as well as Monterey, California and Columbia, South Carolina - before finally settling in the Pacific Northwest with her spouse and two children.

Her debut novel, YOUNG BLOOD, is slated for publication in summer 2023 by Tundra Books/Penguin Random House Canada, as well as a second untitled book about Jewish Werewolves summer 2024. She is represented by Emily Forney at the Bookends Literary Agency.

About Kailei Pew

Kailei Pew is a wife, mother, and children's book author represented by the amazing Emily Forney of Bookends Literary. Kailei's debut Middle Grade Book, KID MADE will be coming to you from Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan Summer 2023

Tuesday From The Trenches: Carolyn Bennett Fraiser

Hello, friends! And happy Tuesday! Did you all see the news about the LAST KidLit Dance Party? If not, make sure to head on over to THIS post to read all the details and register. Valerie Bolling, Kaitlyn Sanchez, and I will be giving away books and critiques to celebrate the end of this great year dancing together. Truly, you do not want to miss this!

As we're about to round out this year, I am so grateful for all that has happened (and super anxious to actually be able to SHARE it with you all *wink, wink*). So thank you for being on this journey with me.

And now, enough about me. Let's jump in to this amazing Tuesday From The Trenches interview with the wonderful Carolyn Bennett Fraiser!

Hi Carolyn! Thank you so much for joining us today. I’m excited to share your story with my readers, so let's just jump right in, shall we?

Can you share your query stats with us?

Time Spent in the Query Trenches: On and off for 6 years.

Number of Agents Queried: 55 different agents (102 editors queried)

Number of Requests for Additional Work/Full Manuscript: 6 agents requested additional work

Number of Twitter Pitch “Likes”: 14 requests from both agents and editors

Number of R&Rs: 1 from an agent, 1 from an editor

Number of Rejections: 32 rejections from agents (and a lot more from editors)

Number of Offers: 2 offers from agents (plus 2 offers from publishers)

Agent and Agency: Tara Gonzalez, Erin Murphy Literary Agency

That is wonderful! Big congratulations! I am so interested to hear more about your experience submitting directly to publishers. I haven't been able to interview many people who took that route, and I think that is such an amazing route and an excited to hear more about that. So over the course of 6 years, how did you keep track of it all? What was your method for organizing queries? Spread sheet? Query Tracker? Etc.

Oh my. It didn’t take me long to realize that I needed to get organized! I started out using Excel and eventually switched over to Google Sheets, so I could check on things wherever I was. I kept a cheat sheet of all the agents and editors that accepted author-only picture books with wishlist information about each one. Then, I created a running list of all the agents and editors I’ve submitted each project to along with their responses. All my query letters were stored in folders under each project so I could refer back to them as needed.

That is some amazing organization! And you are so right that if you don't organize from the get go, it's easy to have things fall through the cracks.

So tell me, how did you handle rejections? Did any sting more than others?

I honestly got better at it the more I submitted out. Rejection was hard at first. I had written for years for the adult magazine market and never saw so many rejections! But then I began looking at each rejection as simply not being the right fit. I’d mark it off and move on to the next query. But yes, some rejections still stung, especially when I really liked a certain agent and had taken a lot of thought in cherry-picking a project out for them. Those were the hardest. But as I became better at targeting my submissions, I also began receiving some incredible feedback from the agents and editors I submitted to. I celebrated each one of those.

Good for you! I think that's a big part of the process, learning which agents are the right fit and really targeting those submissions. But you are so right, some will still just sting, no matter how much we try to avoid that.

How did you find agents to query/how did you decide who to query?

In the beginning, I wasn’t very selective. But as I attended conferences more often, I realized I had to dig deeper. I took every opportunity I could to learn more about an agent before sending out a submission. I attended classes they gave, googled interviews with them, followed them on social media and of course, always kept up-to-date on their wish list (which can change a bit). The information is out there. We just need to look for it.

When listening to an agent speak or reading an interview about them, I looked for things we had in common – not just an interest in a book topic I had written about. Signing with an agent is a partnership and I wanted to connect with someone that I would get along with personally as well as professionally. I often used those common interests as a launching place for my queries. One agent even thanked me for being so personal with my query letter! That’s when I knew I was on the right track.

That is really wonderful. I love that you took the time to make those personal connections and really learn about those you were querying. Sounds like it made all the difference. So with all of that research and preparation, how did you ultimately connect with your agent? Did you cold query? Participate in a twitter pitch event? Or connect in some other way?

My agent is with a closed agency, so I first connected with her through a conference in 2020. Since we couldn’t meet in person, our regional SCBWI Carolinas conference was conducted online. Although she didn’t present, Tara accepted submissions through the conference that year. It was the perfect open door. By this point in my submission process, I was doing very little cold querying. Most of my submissions were in response to some request (a Twitter pitch party, a class/conference, or an open submissions call that was advertised either through the SCBWI or Children’s Book Insider). I have found that I received much better responses from targeted querying than sending submissions to the slush pile. Tara had mentioned on her wishlist that she had an interest in London and I just happened to have two nonfiction picture book projects set in historic London! So I thought, it’s worth a shot and it paid off.

I think you were so wise to take those conference submission opportunities! And it truly did pay off. How much time passed between querying Tara to getting “the call”?

About 4 months. While I was waiting, I received an offer from an editor for a different project than the one I had submitted to Tara, so I nudged her along with several other agents who were reviewing projects of mine, to let her know. It sped up the process. She asked to see that project along with others that I had ready. At that point, she was very interested and scheduled the call.

That is so exciting! Getting those offers really does speed up the process, I'm sure!

Can you tell us more about “the call”? How did you know Tara was the right choice?

Well, I had just had my first “call” with another agent two days before my call with Tara. I had planned a trip to Highlights for a personal weekend retreat, but with an offer on the table, I didn’t want to wait until I got back to speak with her. So we schedule it for the day I arrived at Highlights. As soon as I arrived in my room, I picked up the phone and called.

Having two agents to compare with each other actually helped me think through certain aspects of the decision that I had previously not considered. Both were very nice and I think I would have worked well with either one, but their approach was very different. I took a few days to think it over and decide. In the end, it just felt right. Tara was a newer agent. She was still growing her list, but she wanted to keep it small and personal. I also felt as if I could grow with her. As someone who is new to the publishing industry myself, that appealed to me.

I am so glad you found such a great fit. And I do think ultimately, it just comes down to what feels right. Could you tell us a little about your book that landed your agent?

Truthfully, I’m not sure which project actually landed my agent! The initial project I sent her was about a London man who came up with the classification system for clouds in the early 1800s. But when I sent her my other projects, she got excited more about my lyrical nonfiction picture books than she did with my original submission.

She was very excited to work with the publisher and me on negotiating the contract for MOON TREE, which is expected to be released in the Fall of 2022 through Reycraft Books. MOON TREE is a nonfiction picture book about some seeds that flew to the moon on Apollo 14. The story fascinated me and my hope is that it will inspire children to make a difference in their world.

As an unexpected bonus, the day after I signed with Tara, I received a second offer for a book due out in 2024. So, it’s been an exciting journey – quite the whirlwind after querying for so long.

WOW! What a whirlwind couple of weeks you had with all of those offers flying around. That is truly amazing! Huge congrats. And MOON TREE sounds fascinating. I love nonfiction so much, and I am really excited to get my hands on your book.

If you could give querying authors a piece of advice, what would that be?

Be patient and relax. There are no shortcuts. Do your research and continue to be open to learning new things. Querying can be a stressful part of the publishing process, but I learned so much through the years of querying that I probably would have never learned if I received an offer in that first year. I feel like I’m so much better prepared now than I was back then. My writing is better for it, and I am a stronger person because of it.

That is really such great advice! I love that reminder to be patient and especially to relax. I'm a pretty uptight person if I'm not careful, so that's a good reminder for me!

Where can we connect with you online?

Absolutely! I engage with the writing community mostly on Twitter (@CarolynBFraiser), but I also have an author page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/carolynbfraiser). If you want to sign up for my email newsletter, visit my website at www.carolynbfraiser.com. I’ll be posting a lot about my upcoming books and sharing some great resources in the months to come!

Wonderful. And congratulations again. You have much on the horizon and I am so thrilled for you. Thanks so much for joining us today!

GIVEAWAY OPPORTUNITY!

Carolyn is offering one lucky reader a query critique! Simply retweet THIS post and follow Carolyn on Twitter to enter.

About Carolyn Bennett Fraiser

Carolyn Bennett Fraiser grew up just south of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and was fascinated with the moon. A former journalist, she loves to write about nature and hidden stories buried in history. She currently lives in Brevard, NC, where she stumbled across a local moon tree and knew it was a story that begged to be told. When she is not writing, she enjoys playing the piano or photographing one of the region's many waterfalls.

About Kailei Pew

Kailei Pew is a wife, mother, and children's book author represented by the amazing Emily Forney of Bookends Literary. Kailei's debut Middle Grade Book, KID MADE will be coming to you from Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan Summer 2023

The Last KidLit Holiday Dance Party!

Hello, friends! I cannot believe that we are coming upon the end of the year. For me personally, this year seemed to zoom by. Lots of great book things happened for me this year (I seriously hope I can announce more things very very soon), and personally it was definitely a better year. I hope you ALL had a wonderful year.

What's really hard to believe is that it was a year ago that Kaitlyn Sanchez connected me with Valerie Bolling to kick of a series of KidLit dance parties! Our first holiday event, back in 2020 was so much fun that we held more throughout the year. And now, it is time for the LAST KidLit Holiday Dance Party. I can't believe it's almost the end of this fun event, but Valerie, Kaitlyn, and I all have other commitments and things that we are moving on to. But we could NOT move on to those things without one last dance party because we seriously love them so much! We hope that you will all join us.

KidLit Holiday Dance Party

Saturday, December 11th

2:00 PM Eastern Time

And since this is the last of our parties, we wanted to go out with a bang. We will be giving away manuscript critiques and books and I might just have a couple giveaway surprises up my sleeve.

Register below to attend this virtual zoom event. You will receive the zoom link by December 4th. We cannot WAIT to see you!

Register HERE:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeigzQIMrIhGDIUixdGZuT4QnhIWJ6whiQgkb06iu2oMOK6YQ/viewform?usp=sf_link