Strange experience
I have had a rather strange experience with the Rusoff Agency.
Last February (09) I sent my query, and Marly responded very quickly wishing to see pages. We had a nice exchange about whether I knew someone she knew at the university I had attended. Of course I was excited and sent her my partial.
I didn't hear from the agency again until the first of April, when Julie Mosow contacted me and was apologetic that it had taken that long to get back to me. Several of them there had read the partial and liked it--in fact she praised my writing and story, and said it was something that would be easy to pitch to editors, and they were excited to read more. So I sent the rest of the ms as requested, really pleased with the response so far.
A few weeks later I had another email from Julie, who said that it had been a very hard decision and that they were torn about offering me representation. The current economy, the difficulties in selling women's fiction, and their obligations to current clients were not going to allow them to take me on at that time. But, she said, they didn't think I was going to remain unagented for long, and she went so far as to say that they may end up regretting their decision. She invited me to get back in touch in 6 months' time to see if things might have changed there.
So I thanked her and penciled a note to myself to contact them in October. Then I finished my second novel and had a baby. By the time October rolled around I had not been able to query more agents (you know, baby), and so I contacted Julie again. In the meantime I had done some searching online and found that Julie is one of the agency's readers, I presume to vet mss before passing them to Marly (she is not mentioned on their web site that I can find). I let her know of my continued interest and also attached a pitch and pages from my second novel, thinking she might like it as well. I received the usual auto-reply confirming receipt and also a message asking me to resend my pages in a different format, which I did. When I didn't hear back for several weeks I messaged her at a different agency email address which she had also used in our previous correspondence, but I still heard nothing. A few weeks later I picked up the phone to call, and the rather gruff gentleman who answered did not seem disposed to help me, but did say he would pass on my message to Julie. I still have not heard back.
I'm left wondering why, after such an enthusiastic initial response and an "almost" offer of representation, I would get no response at all after being invited to get back in touch--even if the answer is still no.