Dashboard Literary Agents Success Story Interviews Andrea Homoya

Success Story Interview - Andrea Homoya

An Interview with Andrea Homoya (andreahomoya on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Alex Reubert of HG Literary.

07/22/2026

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?: Andrea Homoya:
Two years after her beloved magazine career and relationship imploded, Phoebe Skiles has reinvented herself as the head cidermaker at high-end cidery Appelle. But when Elise, Appelle’s CEO and Phoebe's best friend, hires a consulting firm to keep Appelle from shuttering its doors for good, Phoebe must put her professional life in the hands of Miles Newport, who calls them a Gen Z brand making a Boomer product. He’s convinced the only thing that can save Appelle is pivoting to a consumer product with mass-market commercial appeal.

Phoebe balks at the idea of watering down her recipes, but she’d rather drink spiked seltzer than disappoint Elise or have another budding career ripped from her hands before it blossoms. With no choice but to pivot from traditional methods, Phoebe vows to save Appelle—for herself and for Elise—by becoming the best modern cidermaker this side of the Mississippi. Along the way, she discovers that sometimes friendship supersedes passion, sometimes commerce enhances craft, and—if Miles Newport has anything to do with it—sometimes a broken heart can learn to beat again.

I was inspired to write FINDING GRAVITY from my own experience owning and operating Ash & Elm Cider Co., a craft cider company based in Indianapolis. My husband and I have experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows over the last decade of small business ownership, and this novel was my attempt to explore the passion and heartache that go into this kind of work from a fictional lens.
QT: How long have you been writing?: Andrea Homoya:
Forever. I was posting fan-fiction when I was thirteen, wrote for my high school and college newspapers, majored in Creative Writing, and taught English at the high school level for four years before I opened Ash & Elm.
QT: How long have you been working on this book?: Andrea Homoya:
A year and a half.
QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?: Andrea Homoya:
Yes. I wrote my first draft and shared it with some friends, who all loved it, but I had this niggling feeling that the manuscript would be more powerful if I swapped the genders of the two main friendship pairs (ie., the cidermaker was originally Miles and the business consultant was originally Phoebe). When I realized how much better my book would be if I made that change---and how I'd have to rewrite the ENTIRE thing, including their struggles, the main plot, all the side characters and elements---I almost scrapped the whole thing. Instead, I rewrote the first couple of chapters with the change and shared it with some of the people who had read the original version. Their enthusiasm for the new direction kept me going through the rewrite, which took me longer than it took to draft the entire original version (5 months for my original draft, 7 months to rewrite it with the genders swapped).
QT: Is this your first book?: Andrea Homoya:
Yes.
QT: Do you have any formal writing training?: Andrea Homoya:
Yes, I majored in creative writing.
QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?: Andrea Homoya:
Nope.
QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?: Andrea Homoya:
So SO many. After I finished that huge rewrite, I had multiple developmental threads I had to go back through and redo to make it stronger. Then I rewrote the first three chapters and began querying. Then I got an R&R from an agent and did another full line-edit with an eye toward pacing. Then I was selected as a RevPit winner and revised it again based on developmental feedback. And now I'm going through it AGAIN with my agent. :)
QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?: Andrea Homoya:
Yes --- I had two who read it as I wrote it, three who read it after my revised gender-swapped draft, probably three or four more after my R&R, a couple after RevPit. I tried to find new people each time who wouldn't have the previous story in their mind so they could come to it without preconceived notions.
QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?: Andrea Homoya:
I always know the very general arc of my stories in terms of characters, inciting incidents, and how it will resolve, but I only really 'see' the next couple chapters ahead when I'm actively drafting.
QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?: Andrea Homoya:
I started querying in March. I had to pull my queries after 6 weeks to revise for RevPit. And then I got my offer two days after I started querying again. So really...maybe seven weeks total.
QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?: Andrea Homoya:
Before RevPit, I sent about 50 queries. After, about 40.
QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?: Andrea Homoya:
I didn't really know what I was doing at first so I just queried agents whose MSWLs seemed to align with my manuscript. As I learned more, I started being more careful about the agencies as well. By the end, I only queried 36 agents with my post-RevPit draft, and they were all selected based on Publishers Marketplace records and agency status.
QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?: Andrea Homoya:
No.
QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?: Andrea Homoya:
Don't query someone you wouldn't want to work with. Truly.

Success Story Interview - Andrea Homoya

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