The Knight Agency (Deidre Knight)

Contemporary Romance 85K
EQ to Elaine Spencer: 03/29/2016
Enthusiastic FR 01/01/2016
06/27/2016 Offer of rep! - very excited, nudged to other agents to either offer or decline.
07/12/16 - second offer of rep received (Pamela Hopkins)
07/18/2016 - accepted Elaine's offer and officially repped!!!

Congrats! It's a very good agency.

Thanks Filigree!!The agency, through my extensive searching and inquiring, has come up as a solid one and over my various exchanges with Elaine, I adore her. She's smart, professional and we clicked almost immediately. I can't believe I have an agent! Gaaaaahhhh!!!

I received two likes from this agency during the most recent Twitter Pitch event -- Deidre herself and Travis Pennington. One or both are reading the requested partial.

Chumplet said:

I received two likes from this agency during the most recent Twitter Pitch event -- Deidre herself and Travis Pennington. One or both are reading the requested partial.

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Best of luck to you, Chumplet. Fingers crossed!

Fingers crossed! I'm too mired in series right now, but if I write a standalone in her genres, Deidre would be in my top ten to query first.

Have things changed with how TKA handles queries? I saw on QueryTracker that they had a new agent named Heather Tebbs, and she handles science fiction and fantasy, so I figured that even though I got a previous query rejected in January from Lucienne Diver, I might try my luck again with my science fiction novel. I queried yesterday and got a response on the same day for a full, but it wasn't from any submissions coordinater it was from both Deidre and Heather.

The main point here is you got a response for a full, so it doesn't matter who it comes from, you got a response! Congrats!

I do recommend that your first five pages be absolute dynamite. That's about how far my agent reads to accept or reject something. So no slow starts, bust out the gate and take no prisoners.

Gillhoughly said:

The main point here is you got a response for a full, so it doesn't matter who it comes from, you got a response! Congrats!

I do recommend that your first five pages be absolute dynamite. That's about how far my agent reads to accept or reject something. So no slow starts, bust out the gate and take no prisoners.

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Thanks, Gillhoughly, your advice is appreciated, and it was followed. I'd sent five pages along with the query as that's what was asked for, and it pretty much does bust out of the gate with a rock 'em, sock 'em fight between a teenager that shoots lightning out of her hands and a tank, so it hits the ground running.

Has anyone interacted with a Ms. Kristy Hunter of TKA? I was thinking about adding her to my query list, but I haven't seen her name listed on this thread.

Vivairi,

Kristy Hunter reps my friend J.C. Welker (THE WISHING HEART). She absolutely ADORES Kristy!!! I haven't had as many interactions with Kristy as some of the other agents and I'm not sure if I know her other clients.

I'm pretty big #TeamTravis. But also (and yeah, I know this is a rare exception but I think it's important to share), I almost was homeless in 2016. I had to do an emergency move out of where I lived and had nowhere to go except my car. When I told him I didn't know if I'd have email access and how terrified I was, he was extremely compassionate. Three days later, he called me to say he sold my book to Audible and hoped it would get me another month's rent. He's also been very supportive when my husband was diagnosed with an incurable condition.

All the agents there, from my experience, seem to genuinely care about their clients and really use a lot of teamwork, which I like. It's definitely sales-driven and more commercially bent, but personally I like that a lot. Very fast-paced.

A little sad at the rejection from Lucienne via Kristy. I sent it at like 7 at night and got the rejection before 7 the next morning. No greeting or anything to make the form rejection a little personal, that stung a bit, at least the other rejections had my name copy pasted into a greeting. What sucks is that I'm pretty sure that in the 11 ish hours overnight that the "we share manuscripts with each other" didn't happen and I can't query anyone else in the group because a rejection from one is a rejection from all.

Sharing my experience.

Queried Knight Agency @ Nephele Tempest August 16, 2018
Form rejection from Kristy Hunter ("Submissions Coordinator and Associate Agent") August 17, 2018

Pretty quick turnaround. And these rejections are so kindly worded.

Does anyone have experience with Janna Bonikowski? I have a full out to her right now.

Queried Lucienne Diver and she responded.

"This is to notify you that your query was forwarded to my associate, Deidre Knight, because it may be a better match. Thank you."

Yay? I don't know if this is good or bad. Good, I hope? If it was totally awful she'd have just rejected, right?

Stytch said:

Queried Lucienne Diver and she responded.

"This is to notify you that your query was forwarded to my associate, Deidre Knight, because it may be a better match. Thank you."

Yay? I don't know if this is good or bad. Good, I hope? If it was totally awful she'd have just rejected, right?

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Definitely good. She would only forward it if she thinks the other agent would be interested. Otherwise she would not take the time to do it.

Agents specialize, even within agencies. She would not have kicked it to another person if it did not show promise.

Also, some agents are carrying a full load and just can't take on more clients.

Queried Kristy Hunter with MG fantasy: 6/20/22
Rejection: 7/11/22

Queried Elaine Spencer back on 9/28, but QueryTracker says she hasn't answered any queries since 10/16. Since I believe it's their policy to answer all queries, I guess I'll nudge in January if I still haven't heard anything. Their website says to check for timeline updates on QM but she doesn't seem to have any.

Update: Ended up getting a form rejection after 133 days