Dashboard Literary Agents Success Story Interviews Keith LaFountaine

Success Story Interview - Keith LaFountaine

An Interview with Keith LaFountaine (floydnerd1993 on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Clara Chuiton of The Rights Factory.

06/18/2025

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?: Keith LaFountaine:
This book is an adult supernatural thriller about a shapeshifter who maintains her immortality by feasting on criminals. Pretty gnarly stuff. The initial inspiration for the story came from a wonderful film released in 2022 called You Won't Be Alone, written and directed by Goran Stolevski, which is about a shapeshifting witch in 19th-century Macedonia. It quickly became a favorite of mine. About a year later, I started reading a lot of astronomy books, including a really interesting one called Chasing the Sun by Richard A. Cohen, which dove into both the cultural significance and scientific properties of that fiery orb above us all. I became fascinated with the age of the universe, particularly the star Betelgeuese, which has (for my entire lifetime at least) always been speculated and discussed as to when it will go supernova. Yet, as of this writing, it's still here. The two ideas converged into a single image - an immortal shapeshifter staring up at Betelgeuse, and I started to write, trying to follow that image where it led.
QT: How long have you been writing?: Keith LaFountaine:
I've been professionally writing for about a decade now, but I've been interested in storytelling since childhood. When I was six, I wrote and illustrated a short story titled The Food Battle which I gave to a student teacher I had a crush on. She was very kind about it - as kind as a student teacher can be when given a handwritten and hand-drawn story about a hot dog battling a box of macaroni and cheese in a kitchen by a six-year-old.
QT: How long have you been working on this book?: Keith LaFountaine:
I started my first draft back in May 2023, and I finished my final draft of it in March 2024.
QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?: Keith LaFountaine:
Definitely. I almost quit on the first draft about a dozen times. I was querying a prior project as I worked on this one, and while those rejection slips piled into my inbox, I found it more difficult to maintain my word count. I didn't write a single word from the beginning of October to almost the end of November. Ultimately what helped me stay on course were two important pieces of advice I've seen over the years from established authors: never self-reject, and finish what you start. I was rejecting my own work before I'd even had a chance to end it, let alone polish it. And once I did finish it and polish it, I knew there was something there.
QT: Is this your first book?: Keith LaFountaine:
It is not. This is my 9th manuscript.
QT: Do you have any formal writing training?: Keith LaFountaine:
Not really. I took a couple of writing classes in my junior and senior years of college, but those were largely workshops. I met a lot of great writers there, and I learned a lot from them, but it was never so formal. The majority of my writing experience has come from reading voraciously and writing a lot - and failing, and starting over.
QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?: Keith LaFountaine:
When I'm actively working on a first draft, I try to hit 2,000 words daily between Monday and Friday. If life intervenes or I'm not feeling it, then I amend that to 10,000 words a week. I usually write either first thing in the morning before my day job or later that night once dinner has been made and the dishes are done.
QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?: Keith LaFountaine:
I do three drafts. As a discovery writer (or whatever else we're calling ourselves these days), my first draft is finding and following the story. I usually give myself a couple weeks to get some space from the work after finishing. I'll then read it over, make some notes, and then re-write the book from scratch for my second draft, using the first draft as the story's skeleton and my notes as a guide for what needs to be fixed or shored up. This often involves heavy rewrites (for my current WIP, I'm in the middle of rewriting roughly 30k words). My third draft is a polish where I address sentence-level issues.
QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?: Keith LaFountaine:
For this book, I actually did not have any beta readers, but I usually have 3-4 people I go to for feedback after the 2nd draft is complete.
QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?: Keith LaFountaine:
From the hip. I've tried outlining in the past, and it's just not for me. But there are definitely times (especially when I'm 60k words into a manuscript and realize I've written myself into a corner) when I wish I could do what outliners do.
QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?: Keith LaFountaine:
My entire querying journey has been about 9 years in the making. I started back in 2016, fresh out of college, querying the book I wrote my senior year. For this specific manuscript, I sent my first query out in April 2024 and I received my offer of rep in June 2025.
QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?: Keith LaFountaine:
I sent out roughly 30 queries.
QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?: Keith LaFountaine:
For this project, I scaled back how many agents I queried (with past projects, I've queried 90+ agents) and focused on two tiers: agents who have requested fulls of prior manuscripts and expressed interest in future work and agents with recent MSWL updates (within the last 90 days) requesting premises like mine.
QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?: Keith LaFountaine:
For this project, I definitely did because the majority of folks I submitted to were agents I knew and had submitted to prior. So, I knew their MSWLs very well. In my letter, I mentioned the appropriate connections to their MSWL and/or that they had requested to see future work based on prior projects that hadn't worked out.
QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?: Keith LaFountaine:
Don't give up. I watched a speech Stephen King gave way back in 2003 at the National Book Awards, where he said, "There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call 'the real world.' In short, there's a time when things can go either way." I experienced that. My years of wobbly persistence came between 2023 and 2025, where the rejections started to land like hammers, and I saw friends and acquaintances announce their agents, their book deals, and their awards while I remained in the trenches. It's easy to spiral down into the doldrums and ask yourself those age-old questions: what am I doing? Am I even a good writer? What is all this effort and work for? And there were times when I wondered whether I should wave my proverbial white flag, power down my computer, and transition into being a cheerleader for the dozens of writers I admire. Thankfully, I persevered, and while it took almost a decade to get to this stage, I finally got here.

I was thinking a lot about that famous Conan O'Brien quote, too - "Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen." And I do believe that. Kindness, hard work, tenacity, those are the things nobody can teach you, but they are indispensable qualities, especially in publishing.
QT: Would you be willing to share your query with us?: Keith LaFountaine:
I would be happy to.

Success Story Interview - Keith LaFountaine

Query Letter: