The Road Can Be (Very) Long

I was asked recently how long had it taken me to get published. When I gave my answer, the person who’d asked me fell over in shock and cracked their egg open.

I started writing fiction back in 2002, after writing screenplays for about seven years (Maybe eight. Can’t remember. Too many wine bottles ago now). So if you start from 2002, then it took me over ten years to get here.

Ten. Years.

You know how many rejections that adds up to? How many failed novels?

Let me talk about "just" the road to publication first. To do that, we have to go back four years, to May 2009 when I finally landed an agent. Before that happy moment, I’d been writing, and writing, and then writing some more for about seven years. Six days a week, averaging forty-eight weeks a year.

You know, whenever I think back to that summer of 2009, I laugh. I was so naïve. I really thought that I’d be published immediately. Or six months, tops.

Um…. Not quite.

It’s a special time for me now. My debut novel, UNTOLD DAMAGE, has finally arrived on bookshelves. Almost exactly sixteen months from the day that my agent emailed me: “Um, dude? Your cell isn’t working. Call me.”

Sixteen months. Woah, right? That’s a pretty unfathomable amount of time.

Let me just say here that I understand that everyone’s road will be different. Some shorter. Some longer. Back in 2002, I really had no idea of just how long that road could be. No idea of how much effort, sweat, and perseverance it would take to go from the road marker of learning the craft of fiction writing, to the road marker of getting an agent, to the road marker of getting published.

And to think that the book that eventually got published wasn’t close to the one that hooked me up with my agent! No, that book didn’t sell. Got close, but never made it over the hill.

The book that did get me over the hill, UNTOLD DAMAGE, was written out of pure desperation. Seriously. The earlier version of the book, as I said, hadn’t sold. I needed something else, something new. I eventually (after months and months of sweating) found that “something else”.  I sent this new version of the first Mark Mallen book off to my agent. And wasn’t I floored when she said she loved it! I mean, I’d hoped she would of course but by that point, about 2.5 years down the road after hooking up with her, I wasn’t sure at all whether she would dig it, or dig me a ditch to go die in.

But, she loved it.

And how did I hook up with my agent? The person who is not only my advocate in the industry, but is also a great listener when I’m freaking the F out over something?

Well, the “getting the agent” part of the journey started with a killer query, naturally. Back in the early spring of 2009, I queried the agent who would eventually sign me. And let me just reiterate here what you probably already know about query letters: they’re really SALES letters. A query tells the reader why they should look at your book. I sent the infamous "nudge" email about six or eight weeks later.

My future agent got back to me almost immediately, thanking me for the nudge and asking to see the rest of the manuscript. So I sent it.

And then I waited.

Waited a couple weeks. Sweated every day that went by. I know we shouldn’t sweat those moments, but I did. What can I say? 

 She got back to me at the end of those two weeks saying, “Let’s seal this deal, dude!”

And that was it!

But, it wasn’t.

This current version of the book had to get polished first, off notes that my agent sent me. Then it went out to publishers. We got responses back. No sale, but some very good feedback. And so after a pow-wow with my agent, I rewrote the book again. Then it got sent it out again, and…

… and then after more "close but no cigar" responses, it was over for that version of the book.

Then what happened? Well, that book got completely rewritten. I gutted it. Put in a new foundation. Added new plumbing. Changed where the windows were situated, and also how the light hit the upstairs deck, and…

… and well, you get it.

Then we went back out on submission. And that leads me to here: having UNTOLD DAMAGE out in the world on bookstore shelves. Over three and half years after getting an agent. Or, if you prefer, a bit over ten years later if you start from when I began writing that first novel.

It’s finally come to fruition. All that work.

And like I mentioned earlier, I realize that it won’t take this long for everyone. Hell, it might take even longer. What I’m trying to say here is that you have to be prepared to play THE LONG GAME. From beginning to end. And in order to get there, you never give up on your goal: for every query you get back that’s a pass, you send out another. Every manuscript that bombs, you write another. Every time you feel like you can’t do it one more time, you do it one more time. Every time you get hit in the face with it all, you get up and keep going. If you want to write to be published, then you have to prepare for the long haul. As I’ve said, it may not always be a long process. But nine times out of ten?

It will be.

Bay Area resident Robert K. Lewis has been a painter, printmaker, and a produced screenwriter. He is a contributor to Macmillan's crime fiction fansite, Criminal Element. Lewis is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the International Thriller Writers, and the Crime Writers Association. Untold Damage is his first novel. The second novel in the Mark Mallen series, Critical Damage, will arrive April, 2014. Visit him online at RobertKLewis.com and at needlecity.wordpress.com.

So You Want to Get Book Pregnant

by Sophie Perinot

If you want to get book pregnant—there is no delicate way to put this—you have to DO IT.  You know . . . query agents (what did you think I meant?).

Not a romantic task, granted.  Query letter composition is unlikely to leave one creatively satiated in the way that writing an 80,000 word novel will.  To torture the sexual innuendo a little further—writing a query is a highly technical and clinical business, like the type of fertility-driven sex that has people taking their temperatures, or leaving specimens in cups.
It’s enough to put a would-be-pregnant author out of the writing mood.

As a result, many writers bog down at the query letter composition stage.  I know someone who has been thinking about querying and working on a query letter for more than a year.  I am NOT making that up.  Yes a query letter is a vital sales document and a badly written one may leave you without the requests for partials and fulls that are necessary preludes to a positive pregnancy test.  And yes writing a good query is not easy (if it were there wouldn’t be hundreds if not thousands of articles and blog posts offering advice on how to compose one). BUT should it really take months and drafts in the double-digits?

No.  To be a little more adamant, NO, NO, NO.

Do NOT let writing your query becomes a Sisyphean struggle (you remember, the guy who had to push the big rock up the hill over and over), because a perfect query letter is NOT an end in itself.  It’s a tool. And tools need to be USED to get a job done.  At some point the incremental improvements you are making as you revise your letter for the umpteenth time are NOT worth the time or the agony. More than this, an over-edited letter can lose voice.

Picking through the query critique forum at Agent Query Connect (my favorite on-line community for the aspiring writer) it’s pretty easy to find threads with ten, twenty, even thirty versions of a single query.  Such treads make me want to scream “GET ON WITH IT! SEND THE DARN THING.” But that kind of verbiage in a critique threads would hardly be appropriate.

So I am saying it here. Just DO it. Stop painting the nursery and query.

I am not saying send your first draft. I am not saying don’t seek critique. I am saying all things in moderation. How many drafts of my letter did I do—maybe four. How many people did I show it to before it went out? Five (and two of them weren’t even writers). Did it work? More than uncommonly well (I had a very high request rate, snagged an agent I adore and now have a published novel). Could my letter have been better? Sure. But if I were still working on polishing it, then my book baby wouldn’t be nearly six months old!

So you found an agent? Yay! Welcome to hell.

So, you’ve found an agent! Good job! Stop reading now, and come back when the euphoria passes.

[Author’s note: As with much of what I have to say about publishing, please bear in mind that at this point my sample size = 1. This means that my experience could ultimately resemble yours, but it could also be wildly different. With any luck, you’re the next Stephanie Meyer.]

Hey, welcome back! Okay, now that you’ve come back to earth, you’ve probably figured out that while finding an agent is quite an accomplishment (not to mention a necessary first step), it isn’t the end of the road; in fact, it’s just the start, and the agony of waiting is about to get much, much  worse. Not only are you contemplating the prospect of getting published, you might even be paid for it!

Remember when you said, “I’m not writing for the money.”? Well, now you are, and unless you are made of sterner (or more ascetic) stuff than I, the dollar signs will start dancing before your eyes very soon. (For awesome blog posts about advances, go here and here.)

The process of finding a publisher can move at the speed of light, or at a glacial pace. The catch is that even when things move at the speed of light, they feel glacial. The time between when your agent sends your book to editors and you finally hear from them is going to be one of the longest you’ve ever experienced. You will come to think of hours as days, and days as months. Your average weekend will last an eon.

Once your agent gets your manuscript, she will send it out to editors. There are different schools of thought on how widely to send a manuscript. If an agent is not entirely sure that the book will sell, she might test the waters by sending it to a few publishers to see what they say. The thinking here is that if everyone comes back with a resounding “Not just no, but Hell No!”, you can revise the book and resubmit elsewhere.

The worst fate that can befall your book at this point is for your agent to submit a book that is not yet ready to lots of publishers; if the book doesn’t sell you you’ll have burned a lot of bridges. Be sure to talk with your agent about the number and kind of presses where she will send your work, and ask her to explain why she is using that strategy. In my case, Josh thought my MS was more or less ready to go, and sent it to about a dozen presses in all.

Once your agent sends out the MS, the best thing you can do (other than go for a long trip away from any sort of communication device, to include carrier pigeons) is try to manage your expectations. While amounts a press will offer vary, they tend to be pretty low (or at least lower then you probably want!) for first time authors.

If my experience is typical (again, keep the sample size in mind), your agent will send your MS to editors who like the kind of fiction you write, and as a result you will receive a lot of positive feedback right off the bat. If an editor loves your book, he will “get additional reads” from other editors and then take it to the editorial/acquisitions board. The editors goal is to build a wave of support behind the book even before the board meets. Cue the dancing dollar signs.

Here is where the trouble starts. Publishers are risk-averse these days, and many of these secondary readers will look for reasons not to publish your book. To make matters worse, the process is incredibly subjective, so virtually any reason to reject a book is good enough. Among the reasons I received were:

• Set too far in the past. Readers want their historical fiction more recent than the 1600s. Yes, tell that to Hilary Mantel.
• The suits up in marketing couldn’t decide if it was a mystery or women’s fiction.
• Too much mystery, not enough midwifery.
• Too much midwifery, not enough mystery.
• Too commercial.
• Not commercial enough.

(Yes, for every editor who thought there was too much [fill in the blank] there was another who thought there was too little. That’s the nature of the beast.)

The point is that the initial interest is not necessarily indicative of a forthcoming offer to buy the book.

But once you receive that offer, the fun begins, because – the waiting isn’t over.

Sam Thomas is the author of The Midwife's Tale coming soon from Minotaur/St.Martin's. You can learn more at his website, like him on Facebook (or in a coffee shop if you run into him there), and follow him on Twitter.

Being Unreasonable

by Priscille Sibley

My husband often tells me that writing is not a business for reasonable people. He tells me this when I'm discouraged. He says that in order to succeed, I must be a little unreasonable. Now, by saying that, he does not mean I should ever be rude. On the contrary, writers should weigh all sides of a situation -- all points of view as it were. We should always try to be kind and respectful and humble in our professional dealings. But he tells me I must be unreasonable because in order to succeed at a daunting task, it takes an unreasonable person. One who can weigh the odds, realize it may not be possible to succeed, and still persevere.

So, let me suggest a different connotation for unreasonable (after all, we're writers and we love words.) I suggest in some regards we must aspire to be unreasonable. Why? Because reasonable people don’t set out to write novels. They don’t offer their work up for critique. Here it is; now tell me what’s wrong with it.  They don’t query agents, receive rejections, and try over and over again. They don’t pray for reviews, knowing those reviews could be scathing. (Of course, we’re actually hoping someone will tell us we’re brilliant.)

Reasonable people find jobs with guaranteed incomes, health insurance, and retirement plans.

Here’s the thing: I never aspired to live a reasonable life. Although for the most part that’s exactly what do. I grew up in a two-parent home, went to college and got an ordinary job. I married and am still married. We have three terrific teenage children.  But as the cliché points out, the devil is in the details.

I met my husband while waiting to go up in a small Cessna. We weren’t in an airport. We were in a potato field. And the pilot had removed all the seats but his to make room for six fools. I was one of those fools. We packed ourselves inside only so we could jump out with parachutes attached to our backs once we’d reached an altitude of 3500 feet.  I jumped nine times over the course of the next few months. On my most memorable jump, I landed in a tree. I was hurt (my leg still bears the scar), and after I healed, I still jumped a few more times.

So I suppose it’s not surprising that I persevered through all the trials along the publishing road. I wrote my first novel when I knew absolutely nothing. (Let’s just say it was a learning experience.) My second attempt went better. For that one, I actually landed an agent, but that manuscript didn’t sell. When my first agent and I parted I still had the dream.

I kept writing. I came up a new story. I researched, I wrote, and then I revised – repeatedly. It was crazy. Why would any sane person continue to spend an endless amount of time doing something which might never pay off? Well, I did jump out of an airplane again after I’d landed in a tree. I’m not a reasonable person.

I found another agent. She pulled my query letter out of her slush pile. She liked the idea. She liked the partial. And then she called.  She told me she loved certain things about it but – she wanted revisions. What she said resonated with me. I loved her suggestions. I loved her approach, so I buckled down yet again. A couple of months later I signed with her.

Last October, my novel, THE PROMISE OF STARDUST, sold to William Morrow in a pre-empt. If I’d been reasonable person I would have given up long ago, and I would never have realized this dream.

I don’t think anyone is ordinary. That’s a misnomer. Our characters may live “ordinary” lives, but we want to see their pluck in a difficult situation. We want them to overcome obstacles and to learn and grow. We want to see them find the extraordinary in themselves and thereby giving us hope that we can too.

So here’s to being unreasonable. Here’s to creating characters who find the will to exceed expectations. 

In that way be unreasonable. Persevere. Aspire. Dream. But don't become a prima donna! Remember, we want our readers to love us. We want our colleagues, our agent, our editors, our writing community to love us. So be respectful and kind and humble. And save that unreasonable side for reaching for the stars (or your rip cord.)

Once You Sign With An Agent, The Wait Is Over (Oh, I Crack Myself Up!)

by Amy Sue Nathan

In January 2010 I started querying agents with my novel. My query letter had been workshopped and critiqued and rewritten many times. Within minutes after I finally pushed “send” – and that took me about 30 minutes the first time (so not kidding) – I received both a request for pages and a rejection.  And so it began. The yin and yang, the tug-o-war, the ups and downs of the query-go-round.  Subsequently I received more requests and even more rejections. Some were sprinkled with kindness and advice. Most were not. 

I met Jason Yarn from The Paradigm Agency about halfway through my agent-quest via a pitch contest on QueryTracker.net. I was one of five winners even though it wasn’t my pitch that got his attention, it was my first line. (Note to aspiring queriers, paste the first page(s) of your novel at the end of your query letter unless expressly forbidden. You just never know.) Next, I was invited to send Jason the full manuscript.  Emails followed. Conversations ensued. Manuscript changes were made. Then, ten months after my first query letter was sent, which was about six months after connecting with Jason, he was my agent.

Ten months and 116 queries to get an agent! That’s longer than it takes to give birth to a real live baby!

Was the process what I expected? Yes and no. I expected it to take a long time to find an agent because that’s the word on the virtual street. And you know, if it’s in a blog or on Facebook or Twitter, it’s true.  Ok, maybe not always, but it is true in this case. Also, I never expected a male agent to connect to my book because the main characters are women and I’d always pegged it as up-market women’s fiction – or as some like to say – a book club book. But I was wrong! Jason connected with the book. And more importantly he connected with me and the way I write and work. And I connected easily to the way he offers his spot-on advice.

What I was right about, and what everyone seems to be right about, is that the perfect agent for your book is the one who loves it and sees its potential as a saleable book in the current market. 

Then – after about another ten months and another round (or two) of revisions to the manuscript, Jason sold The Glass Wives to St. Martin’s Press. 

Just to kill myself kindly refresh your memory – that was twenty months after sending my first query letter. 

And last month, March 2012 – I started my official-real-can’t-believe-it-actual edits from my editor. And soon I’ll wait for her feedback. And then I’ll wait to be published in the Spring of 2013. And then I’ll wait for reviews.  

Get the gist?  

When you want to be a traditionally published author (which many, many writers still do – do not let the naysayers sway you from your dream) waiting is not idle time. There are fulltime jobs and fulltime families and time-worthy friends. There are other books to be written, short stories and essays to compose and to publish, there are industry blogs to read (ahem, you’re reading one now, good for you!) and lists to make. Heck, there are books to read!

During my waiting time since signing with Jason I have written one full novel that is under my bed conducting how-not-to-write-a-novel workshops for the dust bunnies. I’ve sent one kid off to college and learned how to live with just one kid at home. I’ve read about 100 novels and many writing books and articles and blogs and magazines. I’ve had lunch with author friends. I’ve spent time with non-writing friends. I’ve managed a freelance career. I have a full outline and the start of a synopsis for another novel. I’ve gotten a few manicures and pedicures. I have 5,000 words of a novel that will never be finished. And I have a spiral notebook full of beloved scenes and ideas and phrases and characters who are calling me. Loudly. I’ll write that novel when the waiting begins again.

Because it always does. 

Rabbit Test, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Me

When I was invited to join this group, my mind immediately went to the movie Rabbit Test.

Remember that piece of classic cinematic triumph?  I thought not.

No one remembers Rabbit Test, and that’s probably a good thing.  The movie was a box-office flop for a variety of reasons, but the biggest was the fact that no one wanted to sit around for 90 minutes and watch a pregnant man make jokes about morning sickness, mood swings and the constant need to pee.

For those of you who are hopping over to IMDb right now to look up Rabbit Test, I’ll spare you the trouble.  The 1978 comedy was directed by Joan Rivers, starred Billy Crystal in his first movie role, and carried the unforgiveable tag line “The story of the world’s first pregnant man…it’s inconceivably funny.”  The setup is simple: Billy Crystal has unprotected sex with a woman and winds up pregnant.  It could happen to anybody.  What’s unexpected is how unfunny the movie turned out to be—even with cameos by Paul Lynde, Michael Keaton, Jimmy “Dy-no-MITE!” Walker, and Roddy McDowell in drag.  Critics were not kind; Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times, “Whenever one does laugh, it's in spite of the movie, rather than because of it.”  Ouch!  I guess the world wasn’t ready for a knee-slapper about a pregnant man.

Eighteen years later, the world had softened its bias somewhat when Arnold Schwarzenegger decided not to terminator his pregnancy in Junior.  He and Danny DeVito mugged their way through another movie about “the world’s first pregnant man.”  This time, it was a research scientist (Schwarzenegger) who didn’t know what to expect when he was expecting.  The movie poster carried a familiar tag line: “Nothing is inconceivable.”  The box office for Junior was a bit more boffo, thus clearing the way for more feel-good flicks about preggo men.

Which brings me to me.  What’s a Hairy Chest like me doing in a nice place like this?

The Book Pregnant group was founded on the idea that, as writers, we all carry our stories, our characters, our paragraphs around inside us like prenatal passengers.  Right now, if you’re gestating a short story, an essay, a poem, a novel, a memoir, or even a book on the history of Pez dispensers, you are “with book.”  Your mind is swollen, your wrist joints ache, your feet need to be rubbed, and you’re distracted by the constant need to pee.  That’s right—we’re all about metaphor around here.  This blog is founded on the principle of symbolism.

But it’s a true metaphor, isn’t it?  As writers, don’t we constantly bear the weight of imagination and language?  Doesn’t it wear us down with distraction and fill us with delight in equal measure?  As a real-life father of three, I know from experience that my wife had her share of Good Days and Bad Days (along with Ice Cream Days, Mashed-Potatoes-and-Gravy Days, and I-Wish-We’d-Never-Had-Sex Days).  One minute, our work-in-progress is the happiest joy we’ve ever known; the next minute, it’s an insufferable beast of burden.

But then the day comes when we get the happy news: our manuscript is headed for publication.  We get the news not from our OB-GYN, but our agents, an editor, or the mailman who hands us a creamy-white envelope with the return address of a magazine where our work was under consideration. O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!  We will be published!  We will deliver our words and they will grow and go out into the world to make us proud.

That’s when the real waiting begins.  Here at the Book Pregnant blog, we’ve come together as debut authors who have been sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting to be moved from Labor to Delivery.  We’ve commiserated, held back each other’s hair when our colleagues leaned over the toilet in bouts of morning sickness, and have given our share of foot rubs.

I—along with Sam, Wiley, and Robert—am proud to be among the pregnant men of the group.  If I were to turn sideways for a profile views, you’d marvel at my belly bump.  Strangers are always coming up to me and shamelessly asking, "Can I touch it?"

I conceived my book Fobbit—a dark comedy about war—seven years ago while I was in Iraq.  It wasn’t what you’d call an immaculate conception.  In fact, it was downright messy.  My thoughts were scattered, the scenes were hither and yon, characters were undeveloped.  It wasn’t even a novel.  It started life as a journal which I thought would eventually grow into a memoir about my time as an untested soldier at war.  It didn't take long for me to realize the world didn't need another boring, bland-as-vanilla Iraq War memoir.  So I spiced it up with fiction, injected some steroids, and watched it turn into an entirely new and different baby.

But kids have a way of surprising you, don’t they?  What you think is just an energetic fetus turns out to be triplets.  So it goes with my novel.  Over the past nine months—since I got the news from my gyne-agent—it has been reshaped by draft after draft of edits and revisions.  When it’s eventually delivered in September of this year, Fobbit will look nothing like it did when it first started as a mere embryo of an idea.

By now, I’ve probably pushed the pregnant metaphor too far.  You might even say it has stretch marks.  (Okay, I’ll stop.)

But really, I’m happy to have found this community of writers “heavy with book.”  When I got the Book Pregnant invitation, not only did I think of Billy Crystal’s absurd belly, I also remembered one of my favorite writing quotes I’ve been packing around for years (since my undergrad days at the University of Oregon in the 1980s) in that virtual battered and scuffed journal held together by rubber bands.  It goes like this:  “I was with book, as a woman is with child.”  That quote is from a dude—Clive Staples Lewis (C.S. to you and me).  And he certainly knew a thing or two about carrying a book to full term, didn’t he?

That's One Ugly Baby

by Mindy McGinnis

Sometimes you just have to admit it.

Chances are that your first baby is a bit of a problem child. It probably isn't the one that landed an agent. In fact it might be the one that you decide to keep under the bed and only feed during the dark hours so that no one is exposed to its ugliness.

And while doing that to a human being is, you know... illegal, it's probably the best route to take with any book babies that aren't quite ready to see the harsh light of day.

A lot of newly agented writers make the mistake of treating their agent like another crit partner, one with awesome credentials and connections. But that's not what an agent is for. Just like a grandparent who's been leaned on one too many times for free baby-sitting, your agent can get sick of the sight of that book baby.

It's called manuscript fatigue, and it happens to the best of us.

As writers we know to walk away from our work and return with fresh eyes for editing passes. But sometimes we can't resist typing THE END and immediately heading back to Chapter One with a red pen in hand. Pretty soon you get muddled. Pretty soon you lose continuity. Pretty soon the forest and the trees have become one and there are nooses hanging from every branch.

You know the feeling, and you know how it makes you feel about your own work. You don't want your agent to feel that way about your book baby, do you? Uh . . . no. You don't.

So give that baby some serious plastic surgery before handing it off to your agent and saying, "Look what I made!" Use your betas, use your crit partners. Use the same steps that got you here in the first place. Deliver a healthy, well-adjusted adult to your agent, not a helpless thing that needs constant attention and will more than likely crap all over both of you.

My First Agent Crush

by Melanie Thorne

My first and only agent crush hit me during the summer of 2008 at the Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s Conference. My dream agent had bangs and cool nerd glasses and walked in wearing hot-pink, strappy, heeled sandals and sat next to me. She led our workshop with friendly authority and insightful comments; she was encouraging but critical. I got to talk to her during the break. I said I liked her shoes and managed not to drool. She was smart and sarcastic and funny and I decided right then she was going to be my agent.

That afternoon she was on an agent panel—that was why she’d worn the fancy shoes—and I wrote down nearly everything she said in my notebook. The three other agents had good information to share, too, so I took pages of notes about how advances work, what percentages to expect for royalties and commission, what to say in a query letter, what to ask an agent before signing, but most of all their message was clear: make the writing shine before you submit and find an agent who loves your work. Or, as my dream agent said, “If you’re not physically nauseous at the sight of your book, you’re not done,” and, “If your agent loves your writing, she’ll fight for it and for you.” 

I wanted her to fight for me. When I gave her my pitch after class—palms sweaty and my pulse in my temples—she said what every agent-struck author wants to hear: “That sounds interesting. When you’re ready, send me your query and the first two chapters.” OMG! I practically twirled. She was interested!

So I left that conference all flutter-hearted and ready to make my work shine, to make it sing from the rooftops that it was good enough, that it was ready to be represented. I revised for months. I won the Maurice Prize in fiction that fall but I kept revising. All my friends said I was waiting too long, that I should send it to the agent I’d met, but I wasn’t nauseous at the sight of my book yet. I had to follow her advice to the letter or hate myself for rushing and ruining my chances.

I revised for a few more months and finally, finally, I sent my query and the first two chapters just like we’d discussed. I was sure she’d love it. She was perfect for me. She had to see we were a match made in heaven, right?

She rejected me. Very nicely, but still, I was deflated. I’d put myself out there, poured my heart into this relationship only to get dumped with a line that sounded like a bad TV break up: “it just isn’t right for my list at this time.” It’s not you, it’s me. What a cop-out, and a lie, too, because even in teen movies the kid knows that phrase really means something is wrong with you. If this were a real camp crush story, now would be the part where I ran into the bathroom and locked myself into a stall to cry in gasping hiccoughs.

In real life, I mourned for a few days, then I stewed in the bitterness of being scorned, and then I got over it. I emailed my no-longer-dream-agent and asked for more specific criticism. She was kind enough to write back with more feedback, and though she thought the writing was strong and the book had potential and promise, it was just not a “perfect fit” for her.

What I realized is that it wasn’t a clichéd break-up line or a cop-out; it was the truth. I had been so sure she was the one, but she didn’t love my work, and we were, therefore, not a match made in heaven. I didn’t know that the right agent who was the perfect fit for me, who would fight for Hand Me Down in a way ex-dream-agent couldn’t have, was just around the corner, but she was. Just like people say when you get dumped, there are indeed other fish in the sea.

Our first crushes are rarely the relationships that last, but if we’re lucky, we learn from them. I will forever be grateful to the cool agent with the hot-pink heels for her valuable advice and for motivating me to get my manuscript in gear for submission. It was this heavily revised, nausea-inducing manuscript that my actual agent fell in love with just a few weeks later. If I hadn’t been rejected first, I might not have met my true agent-mate, the one who really got my book and my writing, the agent who responded to my first email in a day and believed in me from the start.

We are still happily working together today. 

The Pitch

Brenda Remmes

I know there are a lot of fine writers who struggle endlessly to get a book contract and finally give up.  Many a good novel has died for lack of a home.

My perspective on what I had to do and how hard it was going to be came when I attended my first writers’ conference with the SC Writer’s Workshop in 2008. I learned more about the publishing world in those three days than I had in the previous two years surfing the web. 

Some conferences are made for craft and some are made for marketing.  Like many new writers, I put the cart before the horse and went to the one on marketing first.  But I learned a lot and I got hooked up with a truly wonderful critique group that has guided me through many beginners’ mistakes.

During the next two conferences I continued to rewrite my novel and perfect my pitch.  A pitch is that three minute summation of what you’ve written that might hook a perspective agent or editor.  The common scenario is what is called the elevator pitch. You’ve just gotten on the elevator on the eighth floor to go to your next workshop.  Standing next to you is Ms. Bess Agent from the OMG Publishing Company in Gotham City and your heart skips a beat.  You say, “Shazam, we’re delighted you agreed to attend our conference.  I’ve just completed my novel and I’d love to tell you about it.”

Being Ms Bess Agent, (and honestly I’ve found all the agents I’ve talked to at conferences to be extremely cordial), she says the magic words… “What’s it about?”

Voilà, opportunity just knocked.  Grab it!  You now have approximately three minutes for your pitch before the elevator reaches the lobby.  “My sixty thousand word romance novel tells the story of how Rover Wolf tries to seduce poor beguiling Mercy Flowers, unaware of the fact that she’s on to his dastardly dog tricks and plans to remake him into faithful Fido to fortify her feline fetish.”  Door opens and Ms Bess Agent says, “Sounds interesting.  I’d like to see the first chapter.”  BINGO.

Here’s where my opportunity knocked.  I was at a baby shower in Atlanta.  I never go to baby showers.  I mean never.  Send a gift, stay at home and write is my motto. But this was for my grandson.  What kind of grandmother was I anyway?  So I put on a little lip stick, sucked in my stomach and climbed into a pair of panty hose.  At the refreshment table one of my daughter-in-law-friends says, Mrs. Remmes, let me introduce you to Ms. Bess Editor from Gotham City.”  My ears perk up.

“I’m working on a novel,” I say, watching her body language for any tell-tell signs of a seizure.   I imagine her eyes rolling back into her head as she thinks, Please God, spare me…not another writer, but she can’t help herself and she does what all good editors are trained to do and says, “Really? Tell me about it.”  I lunged into my pitch, promising myself I will shut up in three minutes and leave her in peace. After two mints and a cookie she says, “Here’s my card.  When you start looking for an agent, call me and I’ll give you a couple of good names.”

I did.  She did, and the agent she recommended signed me and sold my book in two weeks.

I know that few writers have had such luck.  This is not the typical story.  I had geared-up to spend a year or longer to find an agent, and at a baby shower a fairy godmother dropped her wand and it hit me on the head. I had gotten the long end of a wish bone.  The mints were laced with a hallucinogenic drug.  Who knows?  But my three recommendations to anyone hoping to publish are:   1) Go to conferences, 2) Get into a good critique group and 3) Polish your pitch.  I probably should add go to baby showers, but then you wouldn’t believe the first part.

I Think It's Love

By Julie Kibler

Happy Valentine's Day!

Getting the call from an agent offering representation is kind of like signing up with the perfect obstetrician or midwife (or, this is a stretch, but since it's Valentine's Day … perfect partner in this baby making business?!). You have a feeling you could be pregnant, you want to find the best person to help you bring this baby into the world. The one that says, "Yep, you've got a book in there! And I can help."

photo credit: hugrakka's Flickr photo stream by creative commons license

As an unagented writer, I spent hours combing the blogosphere for stories about “The Call.” It was a great way to research the process. But these posts were also like little pep talks. Success stories gave me butterflies in my stomach. Realizing dreams, it seemed, wasn’t impossible.

In 2008, I read author Therese Walsh’s post on the fabulous Writer Unboxed blog: “Home Run! Therese Finds her Perfect Agent!” I knew Teri online and admired her determination, attitude, and transparency. I also liked what I saw on her agent’s website—who Elisabeth Weed had chosen to represent and what kinds of books they were writing. I added Elisabeth to my list, dreaming of when I’d send my first query.

In May 2009, I sent that query to the agent at the top of my list—Elisabeth Weed. I sent two more … just to be on the safe side. I was thrilled the next day to receive my very first partial manuscript request from Elisabeth.

My first rejection also came from Elisabeth Weed—one of the nicest I ever received.

There would be more. I queried several more months, not a huge number of letters, perhaps 25 or 30 in all. I received requests, each followed by another rejection. And I was getting a sense that maybe this manuscript wasn’t “the one.” While I loved the story, while the characters lived on in my mind and heart (still do!), I suspected it was time to move on.

Another story had started tugging at me and just wouldn’t let go. I’d learned a surprising bit of family lore, one line, basically, with no more hints of what happened: As a teen, my grandmother had fallen deeply in love with a young black man, and their families tore them apart.

Of course their families tore them apart. It was the 1920s. It was Kentucky and interracial marriage was illegal there. That was all anyone knew—none of the involved parties were living—so it’s all I’ll ever know.

But I began to imagine what might have been. I chose a time and setting slightly different from when and where my grandmother lived. I researched the area, laws, and anything else I could find on the subject.

In April 2010, I wrote the first 30 thousand words of Calling Me Home during a Backspace writing marathon, added another 45 thousand over several months, and in November, I did my own version of NaNoWriMo—NaNoFiMo: National Novel Finishing Month, to write the final 30 thousand.

After the holidays, I began revising in earnest. I set beta readers upon it, and after feedback from my marvelous critique group, some non-writers, and several more months of fiddling with the thing, I decided it was time to query.

When I sent my first few letters at the end of June, I didn’t query Elisabeth. I wanted to be sure my query letter was effective. I didn’t want to waste an opportunity. Because she was still at the top of my list.

I received a request for a partial immediately, and was thrilled, but by then, the last members of my critique group had read my manuscript. I realized I had more work to do. I was relieved I hadn’t sent more queries into the ether.

When I was ready to query again, this time in mid July, I sent my first letter to Elisabeth. I sent a few more a few hours later, just to be on the safe side. (Is this sounding like the movie Groundhog Day? Keep reading!)

I received a request for a partial from Elisabeth Monday afternoon, which I promptly sent. The next day, I received an email from Elisabeth herself. “I just read the first three chapters of Calling Me Home and think they are terrific! Will you send me the rest? I can't wait to see how this love story unfolds.”

Let me think about that ... OF COURSE I WILL! I sent it off late that night after madly making sure all my i‘s were dotted and t’s were crossed.

The next day, a published friend who had read and loved my manuscript asked if she could recommend it to her agent, who graciously agreed to read it. I believe this was providence.

Because when I let Elisabeth know another agent was reading, she replied that she hadn’t received my full. “Please send so I can read the rest. I'm loving it!”

Needless to say, I was allowing myself to hope at this point. Just a little. But trying to keep my cool. And I was also so very thankful I had a reason to check in with her and find out she hadn’t received my manuscript!

I heard from Elisabeth the next Tuesday by email, asking if we could talk by phone. Was I around the next two days? Of course I was. And was this … The Call? I was dying from anticipation. It felt like it was going to be The Call. But I wasn’t going to count my chickens before they hatched.

The next day, July 29, 2011, Elisabeth set me at ease almost immediately in our call with these words: “In case it’s not clear, I’m calling to offer you representation.”

We spent more than an hour on the phone, discussing my manuscript, how she saw it positioned in the marketplace, how she typically worked with clients, and so on. By the time we finished talking, I’d ticked all the questions off my “things to ask potential agent” list without even having to ask most of them. And though most articles you read say to take some time to think about the offer, I had a gut feeling. I told her, “I’m just going to go ahead and say now that I feel good about this. You’ve been my top pick from the day I sent my first query two years ago, you’ve answered all my questions, and I can’t see any reason not to say yes today.”

I sent the other agent a note letting her know that while I appreciated her offer to read and admired her for doing such a truly fabulous job for my friend, I believed I was making the right decision in accepting Elisabeth’s offer. She was gracious and full of good wishes.

Less than two months later, my manuscript, Calling Me Home, sold not only in the United States at auction to St. Martin’s Press, but in nine foreign territories. We’ve added a few since then, as well as some exciting foreign book club opportunities. Calling Me Home will be published sometime in early 2013 in the U.S.

It seems that gut feeling was right on target. I think it's love!