Agent Quest: The story of how an author approached literary agents; an epic dystopian fantasy in an unknown number of parts

So, I have been a writer for a while.

Writing is a bit like a drug. You start off doing just a little and that is enough to get you through the day. Before you notice, you are polishing off a short story as if it were nothing. You start to build up a tolerance.

Eventually, I started hitting the hard stuff. I was working on a cross genre religious satire/SFF novel and a YA fantasy novel in parallel. I interrupted this to write and self publish a guide to surviving the zombie apocalypse.

Self publishing taught me a few things. Knowing how the process works has helped me to assist other writers to do the same. The book sold tolerably well. I did a talk or two at literary festivals and similar. I sold some copies through Amazon and some directly, both signed and unsigned. It was good to have some sales but I didn't really have the will to market books. My addiction is to writing fiction.  I also don't have the financial clout to really market the book by myself.

I decided that I needed a publisher to promote the book, get the book into bricks and mortar stores and get it reviewed. However, the days when publishers would talk to authors in the Trade Book space (that is to say general and genre fiction) are long gone. Publishers talk to agents. Indeed, many of the functions that I mentioned are done by agents rather than publishers these days.

On the plus side, I would not be sending a manuscript in for a publisher to ignore. On the minus side, I would need to chase an agent. They are remarkably elusive!

Questing for the One Ring (TM) or the McGuffin of Evermore may be hard for heroes in a novel but questing for an agent is pretty tough for a mere mortal. However, I have allies. I have an editor who has patiently pointed out that I almost certainly meant "bold" rather than "bald". I have test readers who told me which bits they found funny. I also have a brass neck allowing me to approach strangers with unreasonable requests that they read my work.

It turns out that the brass neck thing is rather valuable.