Special Announcement

Guys, there’s going to be a book.

After graduating from Tech Elevator in April of 2019, I began outlining the experience using this blog to write a memoir. By the summer of 2020, I had a solid first draft. I started organizing my selling implements so that I could attract a literary agent and then possibly sell the book.

I had been through this process many times. I’ve been writing and trying to sell novels since I was twenty-five years old. Sometime around 2012, I secured a literary agent for a book I wrote and together we put together a package and tried to sell to one of the major publishers. We failed.

I persevered after that failure and wrote several more books between 2012 and 2019, when I started at Tech Elevator. But I was never able to hook a literary agent again. When this memoir based on the blog came together, I felt like I had something. Not only because I liked how it turned out, but because there is something of a built-in audience for the book. People who are interested in learning to code, people who are looking to switch careers, people who have wondered if they could do a coding book camp–this story is tailor-made for them.

So, I started the process once more. I wrote a query letter, I wrote a summary, I created a one-line description that captured the theme of the memoir. I researched literary agents and tailored my message specifically to them. I made spreadsheets of those that I would query and in what order I would query them. I put the work in.

Then I sent out a couple emails. Just five. My top five. My favorites. That’s when I lost control. I started checking my email every five minutes, I looked up the agents on Twitter, trying to see if they were actively reading their submissions, I thought about when I was going to get replies all the time.

After a few days of pointless stress, I reconsidered. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to run the gamut I had run so many times before. Maybe I wouldn’t try to sell this one. Maybe this one would just be for me.

I told this to a friend of mine, a book editor named Chastity, whom I used to work with and who had read one of my first drafts. Her reply was, “Oh, that’s too bad, because I’ve done work for a publisher who I think would really like this.”

Come again?

Chastity contacted the publisher, Onyx Neon, seeing if they were interested in a submission. And when they were, she sent a chapter. And when they were interested in that, she sent the book. Soon, a contract was signed, Chastity was hired as the editor, we have cover art, and are just waiting to set a release date. All without a literary agent.

Sometimes, it seems like the world is waiting for you to let go before giving you what you’re seeking.