Another agent full MS request

I just hit the Send button on an email to an agent in New York City who requested the full manuscript of The Frontier Team. I found myself wishing there was an atheist equivalent of prayer.

This agent requested not only the manuscript, but also a synopsis, a bio, and a marketing statement. I had the synopsis already, but it took a couple of days for me to whip up and polish a bio and a marketing statement.

I was introduced to this agent by one of her current clients, whose work is also middle-grade (ages 8-12) and whose protagonists are also home schooled. His stuff hasn't sold in the 18 months in which she has been his agent... but it also sounds as though he has laid off on the writing a bit, so it's hard to tell. I like his stuff, though I think my work is marginally better than his. (Of course, who doesn't think that about his or her own book?) More important, I'm a marketing and P.R. goddess, and he's just an insurance agent or something. ;-) In any case, I am a lot more plugged-in and serious about the whole deal than he is, so I think there is a better-than-average chance she will accept me. This is my most solid lead yet.

The other agent who has my manuscript hasn't gotten back to me yet. (This is the guy who graduated from Penn in 1990, the year before I did.) It's been 6 weeks out of the 8 weeks he gave himself, so I hope it's soon. This most recent agent asked for exclusivity if possible, and it felt good to tell her that I regretted that I couldn't offer her exclusivity because another agent was reading the manuscript, but that I would notify her immediately if he offered representation so she could read it and make a decision. Wouldn't it be awesome if I got *two* offers, now?

I went out on a limb a little bit in my cover letter to this second one... I gave her a sense of my other works-in-progress, with a detailed hook for Food Fights:

Fed up with her father’s obsessive control of her diet as he hops from food fad to food fad, 11-year-old Georgia launches her own personal War for Dietary Independence. As she marshals the army of evidence and experts to support her, Georgia realizes that she is fighting not just her father, but a well-armed food culture. As media hype spirals the war out of control and deepens the rift in Georgia’s family, she realizes that most people believe what they want to believe instead of thinking carefully before forming an opinion. Can she focus her father on the facts, or will his food fixations keep them apart forever?

I realize that this agent hadn't requested any of that information; I hope that rather than distracting her from The Frontier Team, it shows that I'm serious about churning out work that will allow her to make money. We'll see if it pays off.