I'd like to make a request

when the vibes are vibing

This weekend I went to Las Vegas for the first time for the KT Literary staff retreat. Vegas was non-stop sensory overload, but I ate the single best taco I have ever had in my life there. It was not only the best taco, it also might be up there with the best things I have ever eaten, period. I have thought about it every couple of hours since I took the last, perfect bite, and since I never intend to return to Las Vegas I will never again have the perfect taco. It is definitely not something I could replicate at home with any success, and I don’t want to settle for anything less than the real deal. I am both beside myself with sadness over it and also just cherishing every memory, fixing it in my mind as a sensory experience for the ages. It was that good.

Seeing my colleagues was good, too! It is so nice to be in person with the people who are usually just beloved little zoom squares on my monitor, or a collection of words on a thriving Slack. There is a different energy to things when you can sit face to face, and we gossiped a lot and strategized for the new year and laughed so, so much and asked each other probing questions like, “What are the projects you lost to another agent despite wanting to rep them so, so much?” (and then Kait Feldmann taught us the phrase she coined for this situation: WIWO. Wish I Worked On, which is perfect), and were continuously surprised by who was taller or shorter than anticipated (I’m 5’10).

I opened to queries for the first week of the month (so far, I LOVE this and am more excited about queries than I have been in ages as a result) and had closed by the first day of the trip, so I spent some downtime in the airport while waiting to board my flight home reading queries, and I made three requests for full manuscripts. One of them almost immediately notified me that they had an offer of rep on the table so I crashed the read and this morning I reached out to tell the writer that I am obsessed and would like to set up a call to throw my hat in the ring.

Life comes at you fast!

This is the second offer of rep I’ve made in 2025! The first was before I was open to queries, but the writer had been referred to me by a friend. The book was excellent, and also had multiple offers on the table. That writer ended up going with someone else, and I have no idea how my current offer will play out as I haven’t even spoken to them yet. I still have these two other full requests to read, and plenty more queries to go through.

The quality of queries has been really good over all! I don’t make full requests easily, so to have made four (4!)—one referral, three from slush—in the first 42 days of the year is pretty significant for me. I can tell pretty immediately when I’m going to pass on a query, and I can also tell pretty immediately when I’m going to request.

So, how do I know?

This question comes up a lot at conferences, during interviews and panels, pretty much anytime I’m talking about my work this inevitably comes up. “How do you know?”

There are real, professional ways to make this assessment; a checklist to run through. Taking into consideration the market and potential submission strategies and quality of writing and editorial vision and passion and enthusiasm for the project and that ineffable spark of potential, and look, I do have that checklist running in the back of my mind, but it’s not truly how I decide to request a manuscript.

I make requests based on one thing and one thing only.

Vibes.

If the vibes are vibing, I’m going to ask to see more, plain and simple.

Oftentimes the first sentence is a vibe. On occasion, even the mere title is a vibe. I will know if a project has the vibes I’m looking for by the end of the first paragraph in almost all cases.

I’m really struggling to define “vibes” here, because it really is a complex, nuanced thing. It’s everything coming together at once. The premise, the writing, the voice. The project feels crystallized, whole, entirely complete even though I’ve only read a few words. I begin to feel a sickly sort of panic that is truthfully probably just excitement that I can’t identify because I don’t do enough somatic exercises. The project feels alive and I am wholly captivated by it.

I could probably go through (with permission, of course) the projects that my clients submitted to me that ignited this same feeling—to a one I’ve felt it with every client I’ve signed—and try to break down or reverse-engineer how they did it or why it works. And honestly, that back of the mind checklist I mentioned is a large part of it. Quality of writing, my passion and vision for the project, the current market, submissions strategies. But I’m not thinking about any of that stuff consciously when a query kicks me in the face with how freaking great it is. I am too busy being kicked in the face. I am too busy feeling like I might throw up if I don’t inhale the rest of the book right now (and yes, I almost exclusively read fulls in one sitting, with a few exceptions that are always out of my control and always make me grumpy).

It’s also true that sometimes a query and accompanying sample pages do everything right and I don’t feel that zing. Sometimes I put these in my Maybe pile and come back to them later, when my mood has shifted, and either they zing me then, or I pass on something that another agent is inevitably going to snap up and sell in heartbeat. That’s how it goes sometimes. I know it’s trite to hear agents say that rejections aren’t personal, but they aren’t. And a pass does not necessarily reflect poorly on your work. The zing, the spark, that it factor…it’s real. I know it when I see it.

And I can’t wait until I see it again.