Three Books, Three Agents, Four Words

Published August 18, 2026

By Mandy Houk

In the spring of 2007, I attended my very first Pikes Peak Writers Conference, then held at the Colorado Springs Marriott. I’d recently moved to Colorado, recently finished my first novel, and had zero idea what to do next. The week before the conference, I attended my very first PPW event: the pre-conference Write Brain that promised to equip me and calm me down. This seemed like a massive over-promise considering my levels of both ignorance and anxiety.

I was immediately swept into the orbit of Chris Mandeville (and Ruh!) and Deb Courtney, who introduced me to the terms “log line” and “pitch session.” Oh, and they helped me figure out my genre—mainstream literary (did I mention I was ignorant?). 

A week later, I had pitched my book to an agent and gotten a “send it.” It was happening. I was almost 37 years old—ancient!—and I was finally going to be a published author. Or perhaps not yet.

Let me, like Innigo, sum up. 

Novel One was a great learning experience, but it was not a great novel, so I moved on to my next idea. Novel Two earned me a contract with Agent One, whom I met at another PPWC. When I parted ways with Agent One over creative differences, I immediately signed with Agent Two (whom I met at yet another PPWC). 

Agent Two worked on placing Novel Two for a few years, and we got lots of good responses—but all were ultimately passes. It’s hard to place mainstream literary, especially from an unknown author. It didn’t fit their list. It was too similar to something else on their list. It just didn’t quite click.

No matter. I had another idea, and this one was set in 1929. Historical literary! A much more marketable genre. So I buckled down to write Novel Three.

It took a very, very, very long time. I have some boring logistical reasons for the delay, but the main cause for the lengthy process was me. I was getting older, and believing in myself less and less as time went by. The discouragement was an incredible burden to carry, physically and mentally and emotionally (my “no matter” in the previous paragraph was sarcasm—did you see it dripping?). 

By the time I had finished Novel Three, Agent Two was no longer representing fiction. Bad news. But there was good news, too. She had taken over as president of the agency, and she could send Novel Three along to one of her newer agents.  

Enter Agent Three. 

As thoroughly wonderful as Agent Two was (and still is), Agent Three is my literary soulmate. She reads and loves what I read and love, and she wants from books the same things I want from books—the ones I read and the ones I write. The revision process with her was encouraging and dream-affirming, and I started to believe it wasn’t “too late” after all, even as my 54th birthday rapidly approached. 

For the next 23.5 months, Agent Three sent my manuscript out, five to seven targets at a time. She sent me monthly recaps of the responses, or lack thereof (ghosting is a thing even outside of dating apps). When the rejections were especially kind, she sent those in their entirety. Some were a couple of paragraphs long, or even a page. So many words to end with such a tiny one. “No.”

Agent Three checked in by text fairly regularly to express how sure she still was, and would remain, that Novel Three would find a home. “It only takes one yes,” she’d say. And I’d believe her. 

Then, two weeks before the second anniversary of the first sending, we got the shortest response we’d ever received (besides the ghosters). It was four words long, no punctuation, and a single letter. Agent One joked that the default “sent with Yahoo mail for iPhone” was longer than the message itself.

I want this book 

K

It’s a small press, which I love. They mostly publish poetry, which I love. The publisher is a woman, a poet, a novelist, a librettist, a memoirist. Love, love, love, love, love.

We are currently in the midst of edits and revisions. Next up, we’ll talk about covers and layouts. Then promotion and readings and signings. All of which I’ve never done before, but which my years of PPW and PPWC have made familiar and perhaps not overly terrifying.

By the time Novel Three (heretofore known as Novel One) is released, I will be 58 years old. And I will revisit Novel Two, to see if it can become…well…Novel Two. Novel One is being reworked as a short story. And from there? Who knows. 

Except this: I will waste no more time on worrying about aging. 

The aging will take place without my help. The writing will not.

Mandy Houk (say “how” and add a “k”) writes character-driven fiction, sometimes rooted in historical settings. She taught literature and writing to high schoolers for ten years, and is now a writing mentor for moms escaping homelessness and abuse. Mandy’s been a member of PPW since 2007, and of Anselm Arts Guild since 2017. She and her husband have two daughters, a son-in-law, and a house full of rescue animals. Mandy’s novel, THE CREEK WON’T SAY, will be published by Red Hen Press (Kate Gale, editor) in 2027. She is represented by Elisa Saphier of MacGregor & Luedeke Literary.