Success Story Interview - Norees Gasper

An Interview with Norees Gasper (NGasper on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Hayley Steed of Janklow and Nesbit Ltd.

09/05/2024

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?

Norees Gasper:
The book is a dark academia gothic fantasy set in Edinburgh. It follows our protagonist, Astra, who works in a magical archive where she guards the life books, book that contain all the lives of everyone who ever lived. When her brother goes missing she's forced to leave the safety of her archives to find him. There's magic books, demon cats, banshees, and of course some romance. I was inspired by my own experience studying to be a librarian, and particularly by the censorship libraries are currently facing around the world. I also spent half a year living in Edinburgh and always felt the city was perfect for a dark magic story.

QT: How long have you been writing?

Norees Gasper:
I've been writing since I was a little kid. I started with story in notebooks and then graduated to short story contests in my teens. I stopped writing for a while during my time in undergraduate studies, but came back to it during the pandemic and fell in love with it again.

QT: How long have you been working on this book?

Norees Gasper:
I've been working on this book for about a year an a half. I started writing it in late spring 2023. I took a bit of break over the summer and then fully committed to writing it in fall of 2023.

QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?

Norees Gasper:
After querying my previous book for over two years I definitely thoughts about giving up many times. What helped me come back to it was simply starting something new. Diving into a new story helped take my mind off the challenges of querying and allowed me to fall in love with the actual writing again.

QT: Is this your first book?

Norees Gasper:
No, this is not my first book. I wrote two books before this one. I queried one of them for two and a half years before I queried this one.

QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

Norees Gasper:
I don't have any formal training in writing, aside from a few workshops I attended as a child, and the general experience of writing papers and a thesis as part of my studies.

QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?

Norees Gasper:
I didn't do any full re-writes, but I did about three rounds of edits before I sent it out to beta readers, and then another two rounds based on beta feedback before I sent out my first queries.

QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

Norees Gasper:
Yes I had three main beta readers and another two supplementary beta readers.

QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?

Norees Gasper:
I had a rough three act outline before I started, but I did deviate from that quite a bit as a went along. Once I went back for edits I made a more detailed outline to make sure the story was flowing well.

QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?

Norees Gasper:
I queried this book about two weeks before my first offer. My previous book, I queried for two and a half years before I decided to shelve it.

QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?

Norees Gasper:
I sent 18 queries originally, and then another eight after the request for the call came in. So in the end I sent about 26 queries. On my previous book I sent 128 queries.

QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?

Norees Gasper:
The first time I queried widely and didn't really curate my list at all. This time I paid careful attention to each agent's MSWL. I made note of agents from my first book that had told me they wanted to see more of my work. I made a much shorter more specific list. I had planned to do three waves of queries, but luckily only one was needed!

QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?

Norees Gasper:
My biggest advice would be don't stop writing. It's so understandable to pour all your love into your one (possibly first) book. But, that also means the negativity from the querying experience can really wear you down and slowly take away the joy from writing. Keep writing new books, and one of them will be the one, and you'll keep your love of writing alive!