"I love dead frogs ..."

It was getting near the end of the Manuscript Idol session and I was convinced my pages would not be selected. Then the MC started reading my opening line. By the end of the first paragraph, the audience and one agent were killing themselves laughing (which is good because it is a comedy). By the end of the second paragraph, I had a round of applause. I was in heaven. When that died down the MC kept reading and a couple of paragraphs later one of the agents, Janet Reid of FinePrint Literary Management in New York, got up from her seat and went to the podium. 

“Give me that. I love dead frogs.Who's manuscript is it?" She asked.

I put up my hand. The writer sitting beside me gasped. Janet grabbed the manuscript, went back to her seat, sat down, and kept reading.  

Another agent on the panel, Jenoyne Adams of Bliss Literary Agency International, said “I love dead frogs too.”

It was amazing. Both asked me to submit my full manuscript. Out of 30 manuscripts read at the Manuscript Idol session, all but three were rejected. Mine was one that didn't get rejected! 

Then I went to my scheduled agent appointment. It was with Michael Bourett of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. He had already rejected my query from the summer (because he doesn't do comedy), and I hadn’t gone through my mail before coming to the conference (I blame those three dead moths in my mailbox). When I told him what had happened with the other two agents he said he would read my manuscript and asked what else I was working on. He was interested in the, yet unfinished, story about my grandmother. So I had two agents who requested my full and a third agent joined in when he found out the other two were interested.  

That evening several people came up to me and said, 'hey, you're that dead frog woman, congratulations.'

I sent the stuff when I got back Sunday night and checked out their web pages Monday.  Janet Reid had made a reference to dead frogs on her blog. Pretty wild!