This makes me wonder: What typically happens in a situation like this, when an agent leaves suddenly and unexpectedly? In this case it seems to be a mental health situation, but I'm sure it can happen for a myriad of reasons. Is it normal for other people at the agency to come up with a solution, or are the authors left high and dry?
I would think it depends on the agency. Here is my experience, with that question AND with D4EO Literary Agency.
I was agented once upon a time (Early 2013 - mid 2014), and my agent was new to the agency she was with. We did our edits, and then she started submitting my first novel. Before she could sell it, she decided to quit being an agent, after having already sent the novel to all the bigger publishers--but she had not exhausted her list yet.
Right afterward, I was told by the head of the same agency that she thought my novel deserved another round of subs to some smaller pubs and asked if she could send it out, and I gave her permission to go ahead. This was in April of 2014.
Fast forward to the end of May, and I had written a memoir and a proposal for it. As per the head agent's request, I sent her the proposal only, but not the full memoir, to see what she thought. I heard nothing, so I bumped her at the end of June. She did not respond, so in mid July I asked her to stop pitching the first novel, and I told her I was going to try to find an agent that would take on both projects. She wrote back that she hadn't even submitted the first novel to anyone new even though I had given her permission in April!
She agreed not to submit it anywhere until she had a chance to look at the new project and decide if she wanted to rep me (and *all* of my work), or not, and she asked for the full memoir, but with the understanding that I was to begin querying agents with the new project.
Funny enough, in mid-August, Bob Diforio asked if he could send the memoir to a publisher that he thought might be interested. He did *not* offer to rep me--he said it was a one shot deal. After a polite back and forth with the head agent, when I discovered she still had not bothered to take a look at my new work, I decided to let him give it a shot, and I officially severed ties with the old agency.
And...the submission Mr. Diforio sent out ended up in a rejection, unfortunately. I kept querying the project until I'd exhausted my list of agencies, but I was never able to find a new agent for that memoir. I then sent it to a bunch of small presses, with still no luck, so it's now trunked.
I did however find a small press for that first novel, and this past spring I began querying my third book, another novel, so wish me luck in my agent search. Hopefully the third time's the charm.
