Krisserin attended Rachel Hochhauser's birthday book signing in Studio City and wrote 3,300 words on her middle grade love story. Kelton got a rejection with feedback from her dream agent — a thoughtful no that somehow made everything clearer, even if the proposal still needs a full rework. Both hosts are sitting with that particular in-between feeling: not stuck exactly, just parked on the side of the road with their thumbs out.

Which makes the timing of this week's guest feel almost cosmically right. Lauren Khan is a literary agent at Fine Print Literary, host of the Prose Pros podcast, and a psychological thriller author currently querying her own debut novel The Gold Coast — which means she is simultaneously building her client list and watching her own query tracker obsessively. Lauren found her way to agenting after years as a corporate lawyer in Manhattan, a pregnancy, a move to Florida, and the realization that the skills she'd spent years developing in big law — contracts, negotiations, client communication — were exactly what the publishing world needed more of.

The conversation covers everything: why Lauren queried before her manuscript was technically finished (and why she tells clients not to do this), how she accumulated 15 full manuscript requests by refusing to self-reject even the agents she was most intimidated by, and what it felt like to leave her first agent — going from agented author back to just a writer — and why she knew she had to do it anyway. She breaks down what she looks for in a query (comps, a one-sentence pitch, and a back-of-book-style summary), what makes her close her Kindle and not want to pick it back up the next morning, and why no agent is genuinely better than a bad agent, even when turning one down feels terrifying.

Plus: Krisserin and Kelton compare their wildly different plot homework (one spider-web on an oversized Post-it, one color-coded Excel spreadsheet), both celebrate actually completing their goals this week, and Kelton gets perspective from a new therapist who knows the literary world — and had the receipts to put her timeline in context.

Learn more about Lauren Khan:
Website: https://www.laurenjpkhan.com
Query Lauren: https://QueryTracker.net/query/laurenjpkhan
Instagram / TikTok: @laurenjpkhan
The Prose Pros Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-prose-pros/id1835741861

Books Mentioned in this episode:
God of the Woods by Liz Moore
In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead
One and Only by Maureen Goo
It's Different This Time by Josh Richard
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum
Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino

Write to us:
officialpenpalspod@gmail.com

Follow us:
Instagram: @penpalspod
TikTok: @penpalspod
YouTube: @PenPalsPod
SubStack: penpalspod.substack.com

Follow Krisserin and Kelton:
TikTok: @krisserin, @keltonwrites
Instagram: @keltonkin, @keltonwrites
Kelton's Substack: Shangrilogs
Krisserin's Substack: krisserin.substack.com

Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios