Signed with a Literary Agent!!

March 2014 UPDATE: 
This wonderful agent sold 7 books for me in our three years (including the one I queried her about, to Simon & Schuster Pocket). We have recently parted ways amicably.

Okay, now you can read the post, because it's still relevant if you're interested in how authors get agents ;)

November 2011:
Hello Fellow Writers,

Let me start by saying OMG. OMG.

Okay, so here's what happened.... last month I went to a NJ RWA meeting where they were having a panel of agents and editors talking. The whole thing was fascinating, and I ended up being late to the group buffet lunch that they had going on after.

What's that you say? Irrelevant? No. Here's why. By the time I got downstairs, every table was full, except for one seat next the lovely Courtney Miller-Callihan of Sanford J Greenburger Associates. That's the agency that represents Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code fame. Ya know, no big deal.

So we spent lunch chatting about our toddlers etcetera, and at the end of the day I asked if I could query her. No pitch, just if she wouldn't mind if I emailed her a pitch.

The next day I think she requested the full and followed me on Twitter. (she's @millercallihan if you want to follow her too!)

A few weeks went by, and she @ replied me on Twitter saying she was loving my manuscript and would get back to me ASAP.

I called all my friends and asked what they thought ASAP meant in literary-agent speak. Ten seconds? Ten days? Ten weeks?

Shoshanna Evers and literary agent Courtney Miller-Callihan
of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.

A couple weeks later she emailed to set up a time to call, but there was no offer or anything, so I still wasn't sure what that meant. Did it mean she wanted to call and tell me she loved the manuscript but NY would never buy it because it was too gritty/weird, as so many other agents (four) had said?

I told her I'd be signing cover flats at the Ellora's Cave booth at the Book Expo the following day if she wanted to stop by and say hi. Sorry, this story is getting really long, but I'm always interested in how other people got their agent, so that's why I'm telling it like this.

She did, but neither of us had time to chat since she was busy being an agent and I was busy being an author. So when I was done signing, we went and got lunch and talked about the toddlers again and then SHE OFFERED TO REPRESENT MY BOOK!

And that's how it went. I'm thrilled, naturally. The book in question is a post-apocalyptic romance, sort of dystopia meets erotica, and I wrote it during NaNoWriMo.

Squee!