OnyxHawke Agency (Mike Kabongo)

Does anyone have any response times to report from Mike? I sent him a full on 8/30/10 and got a receipt that he got it. He says not to nudge for a full year. (I got the same letter as the one that's posted above) I was wondering if I should just put him down as a "no" as it's been a little over 6 months or if he really does take a year to respond?

All of this just sounds weird to me.... any new news on this guy ans his agency as of late? Getting a little antsy here, not sure if I should submit or not. Kind of on the fence.

Mike's still on my agent list, but way, way down on priority. His blog is interesting, and gives the impression that he knows lots of people. Because of his sparse sales history, odd guidelines, and long response time, I'm hesitant to send him anything.

I never heard back from him on my full. I e-mailed him when I got my agent offer and heard nothing back either. That being said, I follow him on Facebook and he seems a cool guy

Ah. Maybe he's a non responder?

Onyx Hawk Literary Agency

I've been researching agencies today, and this one brings up an impressive amount of nothing. There is a website: http://www.onyxhawke.com, and a blog: http://onyxhawke.livejournal.com, but little else. Preditors & Editors confirms that it's "a literary agency." It's not on AgentQuery, and as far as I can tell, no one on the internet is talking about them except themselves.

I'm surely missing something. Does anyone have more light to shed on the situation? I'm particularly concerned with the submission guidelines that instruct authors to send the whole novel, in RTF format, "one novel at a time," and any query letters will be deleted unread. They also say to "List the minimum length for consideration of any major publisher as listed on the SFWA "Qualifying Novel Venues" at the bottom of your cover letter, with the name of the publisher."

That seems a little strange to me.

Very strange.

My goal is not to be your first agent but your last.

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Is it just me, or does that have very creepy undertones??

:/

He lists Irene Radford, Dave Freer and James Enge as clients (the website doesn't appear to have been updated in years, though his blog is active). These are long-time fantasy authors with dozens of books published by the likes of Pyr, Baen and Daw. Charles Gannon is also listed. He puts out science fiction with Baen. Enge even links back to the agency from his site, so . . . if I wrote that type of dragon, high fantasy story or Gannon's brand of science fiction, I'd at least look a little deeper before crossing this one off my agent list.

He tweeted today about the stupid Slate article shaming adults for reading YA, so he at least seems sensible. It also appears he sold some books to Daw in Jan for an author not listed on his site, so he may have many more clients than it appears.

ETA: Already a thread here on this agency <link snipped>

Whoops; thanks! I google site-searched for another thread and everything. Guess it didn't show up because it was one word.

Off to read that thread (and thanks for the other info too!)

I'd looked at OnyxHawk back in 2010, while querying for a fantasy novel. The guy has some interesting sales. I liked his blog, but decided the general tone and 'jump through my hoops' combativeness of the site put me off. It might well be a great agency for the right authors.

Unimportant said:

What little I've read from this agent does not make me think I could work productively with him, but YMMV.

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My mileage did vary, in that I'm the writer that he sold to DAW. I've enjoyed working with him immensely, for what that's worth.

Just to give a minor update, Mike Kabongo is listed in the acknowledgements page of Marshall Ryan Maresca's latest book, A Murder of Mages, which was published by Daw. So he's still Marshall's agent and still selling his books. Though he's still not listed on QueryTracker. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out in case anyone is trying to research him.

Any updates of sales since last year?