Agents Like Us - Katie Grimm

Agents Like Us asks agents all their deep, dark agenting secrets. This week, Katie Grimm of Don Congdon Associates is here! If you love Arrested Development and are known to bust out in a jig, she's the agent for you.

She's actively looking for literary fiction, young adult, and middle grade. You can find her submission guidelines here, and tweeting under @GrimmLit.

Katie's answers are below in bold. Let us know what makes her like you in the comments!

Katie on Agenting

• When writers query me, I really wish they'd follow the rules! I love rules. And things like title, word count, genre, and this main character in this setting overcoming this problem. It's that easy!

• My favorite part about being an agent is well, I do love THE CALL when you tell the author their life is about to change or the discovery of THE NEXT BIG THING late night on my kindle, but what really gets the tears going is reading reviews or hearing from other readers who have loved my client's book too. Impacting different people all over the world with the same story is why we're all here.

• Rules and trends aside, what I really look for in a story is emotional connection and longevity - I read to grow and learn, and I should be able to get something different out of a book each time I read it, even 10 years from now.

• Whenever I make a book deal, I shout it to the rest of the agency - everyone runs out of their offices, and we all celebrate! I might have a deal jig too.

• I really wish I saw more stories that aren't about THE CHOSEN ONE or saving THE ENTIRE WORLD in speculative fiction - the stakes don't have to be that high for the book to be important. I also want to see more historical, like a YA version of RULES OF CIVILITY, fantasy that feels rooted in history (please a book about the witch trials!), creepy suspense, unreliable narrators and organic speculative fiction in the slush.

Katie on Clients

• My ideal client would never sleep and be able to sustain themselves on reading and writing books alone. Oh, that's not a thing?

• What I love most about my current clientele is their creativity! My clients' new book ideas and revisions give me chills. I think, I must have this, it has to be mine...oh wait, it is!

• What I want most for any client is to share their stories with as many people as possible.

Katie on Life

• If I weren't an agent, I'd probably be a medievalist - I'm really into vellum. And the emergence of Western culture as we now know it. Also, courtly love and witches!

• My favorite (non-client) book is I don't understand the question, and I won't respond to it.

• Secretly, I'm terrified of germs. Okay, maybe the fact I'm a germaphobe is not a secret. I swear this wasn't an issue growing up in Colorado...must be a NYC thing.

• My secret boyfriend is Quentin from THE MAGICIANS or Todd from CHAOS WALKING series? I am not drawn to books where the romance is at the forefront - I think I wore out my ability to swoon after too much Draco Malfoy fanfic (and Pottermore thinks I'm Ravenclaw, argh!). I like, real, flawed male characters that are trying to do the right thing but don't always know what that means.

• I have a total girlcrush on Verity aka Queenie aka a character I cannot forget, and the type of person I want to be in my life.

• Sometimes, when no one is around, I play Candy Crush on my phone. I started doing it "ironically" (I got my first new phone in 4 years a couple weeks ago), but I've definitely resorted to manually changing the date/time on my phone to skip ahead to more lives.

• My favorite drink is brown and has been aged in oak barrel.

Next Week's Agent: Katie Shea Boutillier!