Take the Con

The Conference was this weekend, and it has done its usual job of generally firing me up (and, more immediately, wearing me out). Love it.

I met with an agent who doesn't do histfic, but who seemed to take to my ideas. I got my first request for a full manuscript.

Kids, this: is big. I might even go so far as to say, it is Major. And them as knows, know I don't use THAT joke lightly.

I also spoke with an agent from the same agency, actually, as she who, in my meeting last year, gave me my first request for a partial. I told her, of all the conferences I've attended, she had some of the clearest, simplest, best, and most insightful words of advice I have heard. And the JRW Conference gets GREAT people - so this is saying a very great deal of this agent. I told her she was so good it made me sorry she doesn't do historical fiction, and about my experience with her colleague, and she said I should query her anyway.

So that was pretty great as well.

Did I mention that I had my first request for a full?

From an agent who usually doesn't DO histfic? Did I mention that? Because if I am that good at selling the concept - and if the concept itself is good enough for TWO agents who don't do histfic to open their doors to me - my instincts about this work, and my confidence in its positive fate, are supremely well gratified in this.



With the cast available at this Conference, I expected there was no chance of interest - never mind fruitful meetings, nor opportunities to actually share my work itself. So this result is extraordinary.


***


Let this be understood, my fella babies. The thing is, these introductions STILL aren't likely to turn into offers of representation. The endpoint here isn't an expectation of getting agented. The endpoint here is just what *today* had to offer. That my work does open doors. That it is not so obscure, not so inacessible, that nobody will even listen, nobody will try it.

TODAY is the endpoint of today, and it is genuinely incredible in itself. I am canny and professional enough to present myself in such a way as to invite - well, invitations. My personal impression doesn't elicit closed doors. And the work I have to offer isn't SO out of the main that it alienates, even by virtue of its genre, which definitely *can* close doors for an author. I write in a form that makes some in publishing skittish. Histfic is sometimes as ghettoized as fantasy and sci fi sometimes have been. So being able to present it as something attractive to a pretty wide audience is important - being able to offer the "why" for an agent, "why someone would read this."

I know why, and can say so - and I am also respectful, engaging, and clearly committed.

These things matter. My writing friends (and you know I know who you are): be able to demonstrate them.

Putting words down well is not entirely enough. This is a JOB. You can't skip over the parts you don't like as much, in the name of only wooing your creative muse because you love her Just So Very Much. Make yourself a product almost as good as your work is. Because, in the end, you've got to sell 'em both.