[Forward]

I’m Deidre Knight, agent, author, wife, mom, friend . . . you name it. But for the purpose of posting here, I am president of The Knight Agency, a bicoastal literary agency that has recently entered its thirteenth year. Our client roster is expansive, all the more because we have five agents at our firm. A few of my own clients include New York Times bestselling romance author Gena Showalter, Don Piper and Cecil Murphey, who are co-authors of the runaway bestseller 90 MINUTES IN HEAVEN (more than four million in print now, with 92 weeks on NY TIMES.) I also represent, in no particular order and no doubt leaving out awesome authors, Robin Owens, Jessica Andersen, Marley Gibson, Pamela Britton, and Diana Peterfreund. Plus a number of other fabulous clients, both on my own roster and also company-wide.

But that’s not why I’m here. I’m going to be talking about the other hat that I wear, the one that actually led me to becoming an agent, that of author and lifelong writer. My journey to publication, like that of many other writers, involves years of writing, and then ultimately setting my sights on publication. Still, I can pinpoint the moment when I truly got the authorial bug, and that was when I was nine years old.

I had been keeping a journal, writing in my school’s gifted program on a regular basis, but then suddenly the summer after fourth grade, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution published my essay about Barbie. Big moment. To quote Pretty Woman, “Big, huge…” (although not a mistake, as the rest of that famous line goes.)

The thing was, when that essay made its way into the local paper, a dream gained concrete reality in my little girl eyes and mind. I could truly be published—as in, by writing the kinds of books that I already spent so many hours a day devouring as a reader. I could make that kind of magic happen myself.

What began then was a decades-long pursuit of learning to write, often by experimenting in various genres: short stories, screenplays, movie reviews, articles. Anything to find that path toward self-expression in the written word.

But I hadn’t yet discovered the magical doorway! And what is that, you may ask? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post!

Happy reading! Deidre Knight