Monster List of Picture Book Agents--Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown, Ltd

Ginger Knowlton is an agent with over twenty years of experience. She is the Executive Vice President of Curtis Brown Ltd who represents many great authors for children, including picture book authors! You can read a bit about Ginger Knowlton on her page on the Curtis Brown Ltd website. I saw Ms. Knowlton speak at a SCBWI conference and she seemed smart, kind, and genuine. And she really knew her stuff when it came to children's books! Here are some links for further research so you can decide whether Ginger Knowlton might be a good match for you and your writing:

There's a December 2011 SCBWI Pre-Conference interview with Ginger Knowlton on Cuppa Jolie. You can check out the 2012 Annual SCBWI Winter Conference Faculty list at the SCBWI website.

You can find an older (2006) yet still relevant interview with Ginger on K.L. Going's website.

You can see the Curtis Brown Ltd. listing in Children's Writers and Illustrators Market online. (That doesn't seem right, yet there it is.)

You can read a list of Ginger Knowlton's leading clients on her Publishers Marketplace Listing. There's a fun post where Ginger interviews her client, Cynthea Letitch Smith at Cynsations and Debbi Ridpath Ohi has a fun post: 10 Reason Why My Agent (Ginger Knowlton) Rocks.

There's a nice roundup of information about Ginger Knowlton on Literay Rambles.

Ginger Knowlton represents Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, Greg and Cynthea Letitch Smith, and J. Patrick Lewis, among others.

This post is part of the Monster List of Picture Book Agents. If you have any changes that you think should be made to this listing, please contact me or leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Waiting. Ack!

As I sit here waiting for my photos to upload so I can show you all the new place I am living—they are taking forever to upload—I have started to think about patience. Obviously, it’s something we need in life in general. But when you’re a writer you have to be more patient that a pregnant African Elephant (they’re pregnant for an average of 660 days, in case you were wondering). Now I’m not saying that you need to wait two years on submissions, although I have actually received a couple of rejections two and even three years after I sent in a manuscript!

The thing is, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen or heard someone say it’s been a month, or two, or even three, should I status query? Or worse, I status queried and didn’t hear back, well forget them. Ack!

First of all, most places that you query will have a response time listed somewhere. Whatever that response time is, I find it’s best to just forget about it for as long as you can. Why? Because you don’t want to go crazy with anticipation, that’s why! Of course, you probably won’t be able to forget because you studied the market and chose to send your precious manuscript to this particular agent/editor/publisher for a reason, right? So, take that response time and add a few months to it. The horror! But people in publishing are busy! They have stacks and stacks and stacks of words to read. A person can only do so much so fast. What I like to do is wait until I can barely stand it. (Funny how this usually coincides with the listed response time) and then wait at least another two months before I status query. Yes, I said two months. Maybe even three. Why? To give the person the time to read my manuscript without the added knowledge that I have been bugging them to do so.

Actually, I have gotten pretty good at forgetting (I like to think it’s a skill, not old age creeping up on me) and have found that status querying doesn’t usually matter. I do hear back on submissions eventually. I know there is that rare occasion when something has been lost or forgotten. So, if it makes you feel better and you have waited for what feels like an excruciatingly long amount of time past the stated response time, send a short status query. But be aware that you might not hear back on that either. Policies change. All in all, no response = no. And boy, can those places with a no response policy make the wait easier, because getting a response is a great surprise!

In case you’re wondering, when you have an agent the response times do get shorter, usually. And the responses are often times specific and helpful. But there is still waiting!

Well, my picture still won’t load so I’m going to go do something else for a while. Guess I’ll have to make you wait to see it.

Do you have a personal policy on waiting to hear back on submissions? I'd love to hear what it is.

Monster List of Picture Book Agents--Susan Hawk, The Bent Agency

For this month's addition to The Monster List of Picture Book agents I've chosen to feature Susan Hawk of The Bent Agency. As with many agents, there isn't a ton of information on what she's looking for with regards to picture books, but according to Susan's submission guidelines she represents "authors who write for children of all ages, babies to teenage". That combined with the fact that she's part of a great agency sounds to me like a great opportunity for any children's book writer!

Susan introduced herself on Jenny Bent's blog: Bent On Books and she has recently stated her own blog, Susan Says.

You can find out a bit about Susan's background on her Linkedin profile.

There is a great interview with Susan on Mother. Write. Repeat.

Susan talks about marketing at Market My Words. She states that, "it's important for authors to have some sort of online presence." (If you don't have any online presence and are getting ready to query, this is certainly something you want to consider getting together in my opinion!)

At Writing and Illustrating, Kathleen Temean posted some tips from a First Pages session that Susan participated in.

You can find Susan Hawk on Twitter @susanhawk.

Update 2/21/2012: To find out more about Susan and what she looks for, especially in regards to picture books, read the interview she did with me.
 
This post is part of the Monster List of Picture Book Agents. If you have any changes that you think should be made to this listing, please contact me or leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Life

This past month has been a crazy adventure. My family moved from one mountain to another. Of course, all the moving took place during one snow-stormy week. Funny how things happen like that. We moved into an inn to care take it. It's a beautiful place but the previous occupant had left it quite a mess. My husband and I have been cleaning it for the past two weeks! It's now back to being clean and beautiful so, of course, we had the family over for Thanksgiving and tonight we've invited some friends over for a music party. (There are lots of musicians around these parts it seems.)

I've been trying to do a bit of writing, but the inn really had to take priority for a while. Starting tomorrow I'm hoping to get back to my normal writing life. I've even quit my accounting job and am going to get back to doing things I love to do--especially writing. It doesn't hurt that I've even have had some good writing things happen amongst all my daily chaos. Makes me know that writing is what I need to focus on.

Anyhow, just wanted to check in and let you all know that this month's Monster List of Picture Book Agents post will be a little late. Hopefully I'll have it up tomorrow. I have the post partially done, but the party starts in about a half an hour and I should at least brush my hair. Don't want to become known as the crazy writer around here. At least not too quickly.

I Write Like I Pack

As many of you know, I live on a mountain. It's pretty secluded, especially in winter. We have to maintain about two miles of road. It's not your average straight, flat road either. There's a couple super steep parts, a little dam, and lots of twists and turns. But really, that's not so bad. It's the wind--it makes it really hard to keep the road open so we usually end up snowmobiling, or skiing, or just plain walking, which can be really fun and sometimes not so fun when it's freezing cold and the snow is tearing into your face like little shards of glass and you have kids and groceries to bring safely home from your car you've parked miles away. It also makes you write run on sentences. So, this year my husband and I decided that it would make life easier (and maybe my writing would improve) if we moved for the winter to somewhere that the roads are plowed by someone other than ourselves. Brilliant, aren't we?

I've been packing for the past couple of days. I'm not very good at it. I wander from room to room and look at stuff. I stand around and think things like, do I need to bring this jar of loose change? It is money. Everyone needs money. Every once in a while I put something in a box, and after a ridiculous amount of rounds I am happy and even relieved to find that a box is finally packed and ready to be added to the huge stack of boxes my family has packed. (Amazingly quickly, by the way.)

I realized that this is how I write picture books too. I wander from story to story. Stare at them a lot. Read them over and over. Add some words. Wonder if I need them. Let them sit on the page for a while. Come back and look at them again. Take some words back out. Put in more new ones. I do this over and over until eventually I'm happy and even relieved to find that I have an actual story. Sure, there may still be stuff I don't need or stuff I should add. But it has really shaped up and is ready to move somewhere new--like my critique partners inbox.

Now, for my family's sake we should all hope that I am faster with the packing than the writing. Unfortunately I'm starting to wonder. I'm hoping I'll at least have some stories figured out by the time winter is over. If I don't they'll wait patiently for me to come back to them. So will my jar of change.

Haven't Had an Idea for Picture Book Idea Month Yet? It's Okay!

As all of you fellow PiBoIdMo'ers know, yesterday was the day to come up with your first picture book idea. (Don't know what PiBoIdMo is? Click here to learn about Tara Lazar's Picture Book Idea Month.) My entire day zipped by. It was a busy one (as I'm sure days are for most of us.) I got the kids ready for school, went to work, ran errands, did the laundry, cleaned up around the house, did some work on the new business I'm launching, made the bed, then finally--laid down! Phew. Still, I couldn't rest. I hadn't come up with a single picture book idea all day! Worse yet, I'd barely even had time to think about anything having to do with picture books or writing.

I told myself it was okay, a person can only do so much in a day. I gave up on the idea of having an idea and started reading a nonfiction book, which is what I tend to do when I'm not writing. But I couldn't concentrate. I'm a writer and I felt like I had to write! So I flipped through my notebook and read over a bunch of my old ideas and partially written stories. Man, there are SO MANY stories I need to finish! (These things take time!) I fooled around with a couple. Then I started composing this little blog post here in my head about how it's okay to not have an idea, when out of nowhere I came up with a new idea! I was definitely not even trying. And maybe that's where it's at. It's hard to pressure creativity.

All this is said because I want to send out a little support to those of you who see people posting that they are doing great or have 26 ideas or whatever fabulous picture book idea happening and perhaps feel a little bad. It's great, don't get me wrong. But it's also okay to not have had an idea yet. Sometimes we are just tired, or trying too hard, or just plain and simple haven't had an idea! Some days are like that. Some weeks are even like that.

Tara does have lots of great guest posts coming up to get our creative juices flowing which will definitely help! I really like Karma Wilson's reminder to ask the magic question, What if? It's the same I've heard from other writers including Gordon Korman when I saw him speak to a group of students recently. These are authors with many, many books to their credit. What if? does seem to be a magic question for writers. I'm certainly going to give it a try.

Hang in there my writing friends. The ideas will come, one way or another!

Do I Really Need More Ideas?

Picture book ideas. I have a lot of them. In notebooks, on napkins, on teeny weeny scraps of paper. Do I really need more of them?!

For the first time ever since I had my kids, I've been working a regular old nine to five job. It's been four months and I have to say, I now have mad respect for writers who have families and full time jobs. I mean, knowing it must be hard and actually doing it and feeling how hard it is are two different things. I've had book ideas, sure, but I have been terrible about writing them down! And I certainly haven't had as many ideas as usual with my focus being pulled in an entirely different direction. Numbers! I work in an accounting department. My chat status since I started? wORkiNg WiTh nuMbERs. PleASe SeND hElp!

I'm looking to this year's Picture Book Idea Month to give me a kick in the butt and get me back in the right direction--carrying that notebook and writing things down, and allowing myself to revel in work that is wholly important to me despite having to focus on other things as well. You never know what little nugget of an idea may turn into a great picture book. So, do I really need more ideas? Yes. Yes I do.

Don't know what Picture Book Idea Month is? Wanna join in? Check out Tara Lazar's blog.

Oh, and you see that super cuter banner for Picture Book Idea Month up there? That was created by Bonnie Adamson, illustrator of Bedtime Monster. How cool is that!