Jamie Harrington recently signed with agent Victoria Horn of Liza Dawson Associates. Thank you Jamie for agreeing to this interview, and good luck with your new agent. 


QueryTracker: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you’ve found representation? What inspired you to write it?

Jamie Harrington: Sketch is a 16 year old super villain that can draw the future. Her nemesis, a super cute hero that can fly, turns out to be more fun than any adversary really should be.

QT: How long have you been writing?

JH: If you were to ask my mom this question, she'd tell the story about a poem I wrote in the first grade that's hanging in her kitchen. (Complete with awesome misspelling of famLee--yes, just like the jeans!) But, I started writing novel length books in January.

QT: How long have you been working on this book?

JH: Since April.

QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?

JH: Oh yes, but I would blog about it or tweet about it, and all my writing friends would convince me to stay the course. I really don't know how people did this before they had an online support group.

QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

JH: I have a degree in English Literature. That involved quite a few writing classes, but that's it.

QT: Do you follow a writing "routine" or schedule?

JH: My daughter goes to preschool twice a week, and I sit at the local bakery with headphones in, working on my laptop. But, I am actually the most creative at like 3 in the morning.

QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?

JH: Four times. I also invented a new strategy I like to call fate editing. It's where you open your WIP and scroll the mouse wheel until it stops--then you edit that page. :)

QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

JH: I did. A great group of girls that I met online read it for me, and then I had a couple of teenagers who read as well. I also read parts of it aloud at my local crit group, The DFW Writer's Workshop. They are notorious for their tough crits, so when they said only good things, I knew it was ready.

QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?

JH: I started the story with no real idea or plan. I just LOVED the character and wanted to write her, but then I sat down and figured out what needed to happen in order to make an actual plot with interesting things and, you know--a climax. I pretty much stuck to that for the rest of the book.

QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?

JH: I started querying this book in July. I was nowhere near ready then, and it was a complete mistake. But, I worked on it some more, got some query help from awesome friends, and then about mid-September I started querying more like a real writer and less like a moron.

QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?

JH: I had to know of them or about them in some way. I checked out their websites, their blogs, or twitter accounts if they had one. Sometimes it would just be on the recommendation of a friend--or from an interesting interview.

QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?

JH: Most of the time I did, and that really worked for me. If I said something genuinely personal, they usually responded with a partial request.

QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?

JH: Network. Use the internet, it's free. It will only cost you time. Meet other writers, meet agents, meet editors, publishers, whatever. Just get involved in some sort of writing community. You need those people when you get rejection after rejection, and they are the ones who really *get* it when you sign your agency agreement! (Everyone else is impressed, but they don't understand the journey you've been through like a fellow query trencher.)

QT: Would you be willing to share your query with us?

JH: Sure, but I want to thank Elana Johnson, Rebecca Sutton, and Kiersten White for helping me to turn it into the best darn query letter ever.

Dear Secret Agent (Wo)Man,

I read in an online article that you were looking for teen fiction with a unique voice. I hope my manuscript lives up to your expectations.

Compared to super speed and mind reading, sixteen-year-old Sketch McGee’s ability to draw the future makes her a pretty lame villain in a family of super-bads. It’s all she can do to make it through a day of high school, much less mastermind evil plans. But, everything changes when the new guy, Chase Fairway, steals her heart—which is quickly broken when she discovers he’s the obnoxious new do-gooder in town flying around mucking up her family’s life of crime.

Drawing the future turns out to be a little bit cooler when she learns she can also shape it however she wants. Goodbye do-gooder, hello perfect bad-boy boyfriend Chase. Life is great, until she figures out he’s a whole different kind of bad guy. Not bank-robbing, diamond-stealing evil like her family, but murderous psychopath evil. Suddenly her drawings of a man standing over her dad’s lifeless body make perfect, horrifying sense. Chase plans to kill her dad.

Governed by her emotions and struggling to control her powers, she has to find a way to erase her mistakes and create a new future without Chase as her boyfriend, or watch her father’s death—in real life.

SKETCH, a YA Superhero complete at 60,000 words, is available upon request. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.