The first asked for “2 weeks exclusivity” to our proposal. We agreed and sent it over.

Now we’re still within the 2 week time frame and we received another email asking to view our proposal from another agent. We’re planning to write back and say we have another agent who is currently reviewing the proposal, but we can send it in about 10 days or so. If the first agent wants to move forward, can we still send the proposal to the second agent to get her thoughts on it?

Is that the way we’re supposed to go about this? I guess we’re just looking for some advice on how to handle things from here on out, in order to stay open and honest with all parties.

Thanks!
Bridget & Casey

This just happened to me:

Over the past couple of years I’ve taken several writer’s boot camps from Writer’s Digest with this agent as the primary instructor.

Of course I tried to get her to represent my work. She has been instrumental in helping me mature as a writer but in spite of her laudatory praise of my work, she has never offered to represent me.

I’ve unable to obtain representation for any of my first three novels, so I ended up buying a publishing package in order to get my books out there.

This past Sunday, I sent her an email just to say hi and happy new year. I also sent her the first two chapters of my forth novel that I’ve just started.

I know how many emails you agents must have when you get to the office on Monday, and I honestly didn’t think I’d hear from her. Like you, she has a killer schedule.

To my joy and great surprise, at 9:15 Monday morning, I received an email from her that said, “We should talk. Would around the 17th of the month be good for you?”

Well heck yes. We’ve set up a phone meeting for 3 PM on the 20th.

Here’s the opening of my novel that apparently hooked her:

“The fact that every individual
has his breaking point has been known and, in a crude, unscientific way,
exploited from time immemorial. In some cases, man’s dreadful inhumanity to man
has been inspired by the love of cruelty for its own horrible and fascinating
sake.”

—
Aldous Huxley

CHAPTER
ONE

At first it was just
the symptoms of heroin withdrawal: Tremors, shaking-chills, nausea, vomiting,
severe abdominal cramps, and panic, all of which left Dagineau terrified that
he would die a horrible death before they injected him again with the warm,
brown, nauseating concoction that would bless him with what is known in the
drug world as the Angel’s Kiss — once
more sending him aloft on a tranquil gossamer cloud. Hardcore heroin addicts
refer to this feeling as the Nod.

Then the beatings began — pushing him to the limits
of his endurance. Time lost all meaning, and he descended into the depths of
his very soul — somehow finding the strength to endure.

He turned inward for solace and stumbled to the
brink of the abyss. Here, it seemed as though he could hear beautiful melodies:
A symphony of lyre, flute, and sweet song — the Sirens of Circe’s warning,
calling to him from deep within that black hole, offering a promise of mantic
truths as well as the gilded — fool’s gold — false promise of survival. He
heard, Surrender. Surrender. You’ll be
warm and safe here — no more pain, no more worries. The beautiful refrain
cajoled, caressed, and enveloped him, like his mother’s womb.

Like his namesake, Jason, captain of the Argonauts,
he would not give in to the lure of the Sirens’ songs — mythical beings,
half-woman, half-bird, smashers of ships and murderers of mariners. Fittingly,
their control of the passage through the rocks of Anthemoessa ended in their
own drowning, the Argonauts safe, for now.

“Never.” he shouted, from somewhere deep within his
primal core, clawing his way back from the precipice, surviving, buying another
minute, another hour, one more day — and losing a part of himself — with each
tick of the clock.

Finally he was subjected to the infamous French
telephone method of interrogation developed by the French Foreign Legion. As a
soldier in the Legion’s 1st Parachute Regiment in Algeria, Dagineau
had seen the technique used many times to extract information from rebel
prisoners.

It is an unimaginative — but brutally effective —
means of obtaining information if you don’t care whether the object of the
exercise lives or dies and involves the use of a TP 3-12 field telephone with
its wires attached to the prisoner’s ears, ankles, and testicles. By cranking
the handle of the telephone’s dynamo, a high-voltage shock is supplied to all
points of attachment.

Since there is little amperage but high voltage, it
was unlikely that Dagineau would die as a result. Nevertheless, each shock was
exquisitely painful. His screams — there were many — sounding more animal than
human, were ignored by his tormentors.

One drawback to the technique is that the amount of
voltage received cannot be controlled. If the voltage was too high, Dagineau
would, more often than not, become unconscious — frustrating his inquisitors,
forcing them to interrupt the “interrogation” until he could be revived and the
torture could be continued, until blessed unconsciousness claimed him again.
The pain and the relief from pain became blurred — so much so that his brain
could no longer differentiate one from the other.

In establishing the scientific basis for
brainwashing, Pavlov coined the term Trans-marginal
Inhibition. This is the body’s natural tendency to shut down thought and
action completely when subjected to overwhelming stress. Or, put more simply:
Everyone has a breaking point.

Pavlov also theorized that different individuals
have innate neurological defense mechanisms that determine when or if this
breaking point is reached. Strong emotions — such as fear and helplessness —
tend to push some individuals to this point sooner, rather than later, but,
eventually, everyone arrives there.

There is always an exception to every theory, and a
select few individuals possess the inherent ability to retreat so far into the
depths of their own subconscious mind that they, in effect, journey back in
time to a safer place. These rare individuals will die before they break.

Sergeant Jason Dagineau, formerly of the French
Foreign Legion’s 1st Parachute Regiment and, now, newly enlisted in
the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command, was such a man.

Go figure.

Jim

H.V. Purvis author of Extinction, soon to be released: Survival and Death in a Small Town.
http://www.hvpurvis.com, https://www.facebook.com/pages/HV-Purvis/383626835091562, Twitter @hvpurvis

My friend has recently terminated her author / agent agreement (along with half of Mr. Agent’s client list – #agentbeware!), and is hopeful to gain represenation for her non-fiction project.

Should she mention her previous agreement in the initial query?