Collection

Fella babies, today we start off with the direct line from representation to racism. (The click beyond.)

Marketing ten thousand steps for fifty years. Man, what a triumph - but not of healthcare information.

It's been my policy to view actual moving/sound footage of Trump as little as possible, so I rarely end up seeing Melania either. However, during his recent visit to the U.K., I caught a little of their welcome to Charles and Camilla ... and was car-wreck fascinated. Go to about :45 and watch her attempts to maintain a smile. It's eerie.




And then there's the light FIST she makes as she turns to enter the house. Yikes.

Welp, and if like me looking at those two (not meaning Charles and Camilla, but hey, YMMV) makes you feel dirty ... maybe it's a good thing. On the relationship of microbial bacteria and depression - not what you might think! (Or: hooray for pets!)

And here we have the final nail in the coffin as to my old argument with my bro: I am NOT a(n) historian.

______ Porn

Life being what it is these days, I recently had to explain to my tender-eared mother the concept of "food porn." You can't always trust that your little parents won't be exposed to such outre' things; you can, of course, take control of how you explain them to your family.

Food porn is this thing where people take photos of their food so they can share both the deliciousness they are about to enjoy, and tease others with how well they are eating.

It's the ubiquity of television food shows, reveling in exotic ingredients and watching judge after judge ooh-ing and ahh-ing over delicacies we may never be able to enjoy. It's both a sharing and a teasing with food. It's the basis of, at this point, SEVERAL industries - not just one.

The key to food porn of the description in quotes, roughly what I said to my mom, is the teasing, the punishment, the 'better than thou' art eating aspect. Tantalization is *meant* to be a bit cruel.

Substitute other words for "food" and we have all the teasing habits and infotainment making cultural forces we barely knew about when I was a kid.

Tantalization is meant to be cruel.

HGTV specializes in, essentially, architectural porn, a lifestyle on sale - with all the sponsors clearly delineated along the way, so you can ensure your life is properly equipped with hardwood floors never walked upon by anyone before you, white custom cabinetry, granite kitchens, stainless steel appliances.

Wealth porn has been around a long time. Pioneered during the Great Depression in movies of opulence and glamour, it was industrialized for the first time by the likes of Robin Leach, and by now the cultural landscape is rife with people essentially famous for living wealthily, and people becoming wealthy by selling their lives in order to finace ever-more eye-popping lifestyles.

Not so long ago, the sellability of economy porn - specifically, financial scare porn, brought us that glorious year, 2008. (HGTV's specialty, selling homes beyond the means of buyers, indubitably deserves credit for marketing tie-ins.

We've come to a place of generalizing this last variety, to where FEAR PORN all by itself is an engine not merely of lifestyle, but now commands politics worldwide.

Tantalization  is meant to be cruel.

The world is populated with scab-pickers. It hurts. We shouldn't. We do.

Ow, ow, ow. Do it again.

Selling the pain of fear clearly works. Fear the crime rate: ignore real-world statistics; just fear crime, fear that The Other is coming to murder you in your bed. Fear The Other: forget that immigrants are mostly children and their mothers; just fear that *some* of them are men who by dint of their color, or religion, or both, are terrorists. Fear that others' advantage is your disadvantage. Fear everything ... except those most stridently crowing about FEAR.

For them, please vote. Early and often. Leave facts, or facticity (*), to them; only fear, and come to them for protection.

Fear porn. Because it sells. And it's making somebody money.


(*Having not checked the copyright on "truthiness", I coined this term as a pointer to the many statistics and explicit/specific/blatant lies we are being sold of late. But alas, it turns out to be an actual word! Even though spell Czech gives it the red-squiggly underline. Well, durnit.)

All links - which are the same link repeated, involve the language of domination. Hover over the link to read the URL and decide whether you are too sensitive!

Collection

Let’s take it as given that everyone reading this considers themselves above reading “list” posts or anything ever written for Buzzfeed.  Let’s assume we all know this is reductive silliness with no real importance nor even validity (… maybe!).  I won’t tell anyone if you click through – but  if you do, don’t feel bad; because #25 is perhaps the best time I’ve had with words since “immaterial”, and I didn’t even have have to produce the keystrokes.  28 “Favorite” Books That are Huge Red Flags …  Enjoy! We’re all friends here.

Everyone knows disgust and politics are closely related.  But did you know disgust actually underlies formulation of our politics?  Figures.

Because my TBR pile is not tall enough to topple yet, somehow - Religion and the Decline of Magic.  For me, the title alone is catnip, but its depth of content looks entirely absorbing.  Research on antique *mindsets* is so difficult, and this, even though it's not my period, would be illuminating!

Janet Reid relieves querying authors of the burden of research - or, at least, of the pitfalls of the databases most of us create.  Truth be told, I'll still keep personalizing - I'm an inveterate researcher, and I *have* had the best luck with the best-personalized of my queries.  It makes *me* feel better.  But, in keeping with the new directive - I did quit keeping spreadsheets and bookmarking interviews etc. a good while ago.  I read, I refer, I send, I quit.  Queries stay in the "query" folder until response is clear, and then go to the "completed" archive.  That's it.

Synopses: Begotten, not (re)Made

This actually exemplifies for me *exactly* why synopsis-writing is frustrating. Not only is there a very wide range of quantity requested ("three to five paragraphs" or "one page" or "three pages" and so on), but there are a number of agents I've queried who in fact specify that all characters *must* be mentioned. I know this is a sure way to clunk-ifying a synopsis. And mine is clunked, because I've seen more guidelines instructing the inclusion of characters than not. Like a lot of neurotic pre-published authors - I obey like a spanked puppy.

Then there is the reworking of the clunker for almost every single query, because of all those varying particulars in submission guidelines. It's a bit like the Biblical genealogies; "who really reads The Begats?" But The Begats are canon.

Okay, here at the ranch we're not supposed to post autoerotically about querying hell, but ... these three posts at BookEnds are not just relevant to my authorial audience, but a perfect example to non-writers of what those of us seeking publication have to deal with, and an interesting point on the continuum of madness that is the path to success.

Readers here know I'm not precious about my darlings, and kill 'em off with dispassion - even with elán, often.  It feels good to improve my product, to be honest.

It feels like hell on a stick with cheese to work and rework and deploy and redeploy the tools to shill said product, just to get a professional to say "I'm willing to try selling this."  It's exhausting, and as often as you find advice on how to write The Perfect Synopsis, you find the submission guideline for which TPS is defined by entirely different terms.

Truth be told, I like the three posts above.  BookEnds' blog is a good one, and advice from those professionals you respect is worthwhile by extension of that respect.

The real point is that there is no such thing as TPS.  There is no industry standard, and there's no one single synopsis any author will ever be able to use for every single query.  Just as there is no single query.

This is both the joy and the head-desking frustration of publishing.  For all I complained on that third post at BookEnds:  for me, ultimately, this is just the minor pain that will make the pleasures stand out as they transform into success.  It's the gauntlet, the dues to pay.  And I have the luxury of choosing when to pay.

At post-ten-p.m. on a Thursday night:  I don't have to come up with a toll right now.  I can rest, get through the gate, and make better progress tomorrow.

Processs of Elimination

Unpublished authors, I think, often forget that there are two sides to every slush pile.  On the one hand, agents are out to eliminate queries so they can devote time to those magical manuscripts that will set them afire - and with which they can set the publishing world on fire in turn.

On the other hand, authors (lest we ever forget: the ones who create any and all possible product in the publishing market ... ALL. OF. IT.) have to remember we must eliminate agents, too.  We can't just query 'em all, it's no way to find the right one.

And research can be grueling.

Here's the thing, though.  Sometimes, we can make it easy on ourselves.

I just eliminated an agent from my list because, though they are listed as repping histfic, their own list of what they're looking for included "women's lit, chicklit, lady lit, and lad lit".

Nope.  Not my agent.  Ever.

Also:  gag.  Gag me with a spoon, even.  GAH!

I no more accept that literature needs a pink label on it so my soft little female brain will know I'm allowed to read it than I accept that razors and soaps and automotive accessories and anything sold in a hardware store (.... or, you know, anywhere at all) need to be pink so I'll know my soft little female hands are allowed to use them.

Ya gotta have limits.  When it's 74 degrees outside one day in December, 41 the next, and bouncing back up to 66 the NEXT, it may be said that limits can get as tight as your headbone.

Still, I don't think I'll run squealing back toward this one any time soon.  I'm on the lookout for the agent who reps my genre and maybe gushes about puddy lit too.

Collection

Gary Corby tells us about the Father of History's inception of that greatest of events - an author's reading in support of book sales.  Welcome to 440 BCE ...

Donna Everheart lays out very nicely the reasons I'm always telling people I do NOT expect to be able to quit my job to become a full-time author.  Published or not, it's not a big-bucks business for any but the very, VEEERRRY few ...

Who needs a kiss?  Passion of Former Days lives up to its adjective here - I think I like the Donyale Luna one best.  If only because it gives me a chance to use her name, which I have always loved.  Though Russ Tamblyn and Venetia Stevenson's photo is a stunning image!

Jeff Sypeck gives us the story of a weed, with a side of etymology.  (I love etymology almost as much as I love purple flowers.  Okay, more.)

Commie-informer, massive tax enthusiast, good kisser (to the detriment of two Hollywood careers) - ten of the now-lesser-known facts about The Gipper.

Collection

Most of these one star book reviews will make you want to shoot yourself (or, perhaps, their "authors") in the neck.  Some of them are slyly hilarious, though!  Thank you, Zuba, for sending me down this rabbit hole!

Kristi Tuck Austin has some words on rock stars and authors - and no patience for the reticent writers who ignore and short-shrift their fans.  Me neither, lady!

18th century France is NOW - in San Francisco.  A great piece again from The History Blog, with videos worth a look if you're curious about how to move your gilded historical salon across a couple continents and an ocean.  The clips on gilding and wood carving are the best, short and illuminating.  So to speak!

Finally:  Gossamer would like to assure you, "It's all all right.  You'll be okay.  Promise."

Just needed to get a photo in, keep the visual interest.

Pitchery

Thinking about The Query Shark’s posts on pitch sessions, and my own experiences both with these and with Pitchapalooza, I’ve been ruminating on how useful they are.  The thing is, I’ve had 100% success with in-person pitches – with “success” defined as “agent asks for partial or full” (and fulls are more frequent as electronic delivery improves; as Victoria Skurnick said to me, and part of the reason I asked her for an interview to be published here, “Why ask for a partial, it’s all the same by email”).  There was a time when a full request was a HUGE deal, but either out of my own experience or because technology has changed so much in the industry, even down to these preliminary events, it seems less earth-shaking now than once it did.

As for pitch sessions, part of Janet Reid’s objection is the nervousness and the novice state of so many of the writers she sees during sessions.  Much as I’m little burdened with preciousness about the killing off of my darlings, I was fortunate to have parents who very consciously and explicitly raised me and my brother to be able to talk to people in any walk of life.  Now, for me and my brother, this does NOTHING to actually eliminate nervousness, *but* it does manage the thing – and, frankly, there’s not much interest in a life into which a little nervousness never falls.  Nervousness is close kin to excitement – and, if you’re excited about what you have written, as far as a pitch session goes, that can bring you halfway “there” so to speak.

I pay attention to how I plan to pitch, but I’m not scripted beyond those points about Clovis’ story I personally found so compelling I needed to write it, and which I know make the strongest selling points both literarily and in the market.  Now, if I were blessed to attend conferences more regularly or closely dealing with my particular GENRE, maybe I’d have been agented years ago just off an in-person – but, as much as I love JRW, and as widely worthwhile as I find The Ax and the Vase to be … you may be astonished to learn that, apparently, the trade in ancient Frankish kings is not brisk in fiction currently.

(That’s not to say that the market is not good, but it does speak to Clovis’ relative obscurity next to the ubiquitous Tudors, Rome, and even the odd Plantagenet in histfic alone – and histfic is only one area out of many, when it comes to conference-planning for maximum impact.  Take a look at the fascinating data produced recently by a historical fiction survey; even keeping in mind that this was created by sampling a necessarily skewed sample, the results are interesting and even encouraging.)

I keep getting off discussion of pitching.  One has to be careful, you can do that in a 5-minute session, and POOF it’s all over then.

Another objection Reid has is that the five-minute pre set meeting is all an author gets, at a conference.  This is where my love of JRW forces me to point out that – SOME conferences invite participants/agents/marquee speakers/editors to come AND TO BE THERE THE WHOLE TIME.  Buttonholing agents in the hall is not merely encouraged, but built into the experience.  So, at JRW – yes, they have pitch sessions (as Reid points out, to omit them might cause riots from writers who expect them), but there is also the opportunity to pitch impromptu … and just to have LUNCH with people.  This past conference, I reacquainted myself briefly with Paige Wheeler, the first agent to ever request a partial from me (I need to re-query her ASAP!), and formally pitched both Victoria Skurnick and Deborah Grosvenor, who was incredibly generous in fitting me in at the end of an extraordinarly long day, and even got to just sit and relax for a while at a table off on its own slightly apart from the center of activity, talking cello music and mezzuzahs with Ms. Skurnick, who was so painfully delightful I asked for the interview then and there (and she was enthusiastic and lovely in saying yes, I’d love to).

So, clearly, I would number among those authors whose reaction to Janet Reid’s condemnation of these sessions would be resistant, to say the least.  But then, I’m among those lucky twits whose reaction to nervousness itself seems to be manageable and productive – and I am also smug enough to say to myself, an author who wants to sell a book needs to be able to sell her or himself, so for pete’s sake, pitch sessions are just part of that education we need in order not only to improve our pitches and queries themselves, but to participate in the larger world I am trying to become part of, that of Published Author.

Who the HELL put that soapox there, and how did I trip on it … ?

Um.  So – yeah, I kind of like pitch sessions.  I like being surrounded by friends old and new, sharing these tiny and painful short works, getting feedback, rehearsing, improving them.  Conferences have borne, for me, some of the best marketing work I’ve been able to produce in support of Ax itself.  And, nervous or not, I’ve never been to one where EVERYONE was not completely supportive, no matter the context.  And the agents are not the least of this.  I’ve learned, even those who don’t “do” my genre are generally delightful people, and at times there’ve been those it just hurts me to know don’t work in my area.  (Michelle Brower, I’m looking at you.)

Just thinking about all this makes me want to get a-querying and impress the pants off of those I’ve met – and Janet Reid herself (are you kidding me?  Love Query Shark like I do, and NOT take a chance?  No way – now that she’s open for queries again, she’s on the list, of course she is).  And so I must away, and get cracking.

Even if I can’t vomit on anyone’s shoes.

Collection

Apart from the geographically snobby Nova Dakota comment here, this is good advice once again from Janet Reid, Query Shark.  (Still trying to decide whether I'm pleased - because I'm not done revising - or bummed, because it shouldn't take that long to finish, that her closed-to-queries period has extended through year end.  Decisions, decisions.  Ah well!)

All for the sake of a single button.

And, quite literally riffing off the link above:  the hurdy gurdy man!


This makes me want to look up images of the instrument – is that decoration painted?  The workmanship must have been beautiful on many of these.

On the *visual* love of words, and a writing exercise.  With Banksy in New York this past week, it’s a nicely timed post even for those of us who won’t make it to Italy soon.

(This bit reminds me of The Death of ... everything.)  “Post-It notes put us over the edge”  I feel pretty guilty – I bought my boss paperclips just this week.  Also, a detailed, balanced, and highly readable deconstruction of the Paleo-diet fad.

Janet Reid, Query Shark

Janet Reid also gets her own post today, because what she's been doing with her Question Emporium posts recently deserves expansion.  I posted her comment recently about what her job is(n't), but that too begs further discussion.

So, read this post for her elucidation on what doesn't sell and the crucial point that what SHE can't sell isn't necessarily un-sellable.  It's important to keep these things in mind.  Though you don't have to go the Special Snowflake (... or is it Highlander ... ?) route in seeking an agent, it is not the case that *any* agent is okay, nor that all agents provide the same opportunities for success.  Agents know this.  We need to remember it too.

And read this post for a quick look at the realities of profit and return in publishing.  What ho!

Janet Reid, Query Shark

My job is not to find good books.

Forget that, and forget ever getting an agent at all.

How to Read

I didn't want to steal a vid from Day without credit, and so this appears in the Collection post below.  However, this lesson is extremely useful for those of us still learning our way - and hoping, someday, to have readings of our own.  This deserved a *post* of its own.

So l...i...s...t...e...n...



Good material, well taught.

Part 2:





Be audible.  Do it from your diaphragm (Steve Martin jokes may be leaping to mind - and that is okay ...).

Read slowly - pacing is important in the writing; why wouldn't your rhythm as a reader matter?

Choose your passage carefully - watch the number of characters in a scene; is it self-contained? (dramatic content/is your stopping point a cliffhanger?); listen to the language (onomatopoeia); control your own interpretation (read the meanings) ...

One of her pieces of advice is to read from the POV of your own gender ... a trick I won't be able to accomplish with Clovis, written as it is in first person from his POV ...  But even so, it can be done.  I suspect my abilities do run so far; I've read this MSS so many times, out loud, just in its very writing.

The voice is a muscle.  She comments near the beginning of video #2 on resonating and what a sinus infection can do to you.  True too of bronchial issues:  this past couple of weeks?  I could not have used mine properly!

Pitch, placement, pacing, accent, attitude.  (And not all attitude is 'tude, yo.)

GKDTBP.

Also, I agree with Day.  The attitude section is great.

How to Write a Great Query Letter ... What They're Not Saying

There are likely thousands of articles and blog posts out there offering advice on how to get an agent's attention.  There's also no shortage of agents at conferences, explaining what to do/not to do quite passionately.  I've read and listened to my share, and after a while you start to shake your head because either people are stupider, en masse, than you can comfortably contemplate, or it is just far too easy.  Some of the commonest advice boils down thus:

• Address queries to a particular agent - this means, don't send out a blast email query to every agent whose email you could find, without personalizing nor, perhaps, even researching to whom you are sending.  Choose to whom to submit by researching, and know your audience - and create each submission for its recipient.
• Corollary to addressing a particular agent - spell his or her name correctly.  Seriously, getting a name wrong is a pretty basic insult to avoid in an attempt to get someone's professional attention.
• Follow the agency's submissions guidelines - if an agency as a whole or a particular agent prohibits attachments, or specifically says they like to see word count, or requires the use of an electronic form, counting yourself as the Special Snowflake who doesn't have to conform to simple guidelines is a dealbreaker.  Just do it.  It's the low-low price of admission.
• Content - keep it to a page or less.  Don't yammer about the money you're going to make an agent.  Don't cast the movie.  Don't be a braggart, and don't be an apologetic milquetoast either.  Get the synopsis done, introduce yourself as a prospect, include what is required/allowed, and get out.  With THANKS for time, attention, etc.  (Yes:  this kind of thing actually needs to be said.  Sad, isn't it?)
• Mechanics - anything you send represents your writing.  If it's not free of typos, misspellings, outright construction errors, and precious formatting, it will speak very very VERY poorly indeed of your skill in the field of writing.  If it lacks energy and momentum, the assumption will be:  so does your manuscript.  Your main character, setting, and major dramatic question should be clear in your query. (Again, yes:  this kind of thing actually needs to be explained.  Ad naseum, yet.)

A lot of it is professionalism and common sense, and of course - unfortunately - it's all too necessary to advise professionalism and simple common sense, particularly in a field so dominated by dreams.  People as a whole aren't super with the self-awareness thing, and self-awareness is unfortunately very necessary when it comes to successfully presenting that self to others in patent bids for attention.  Know your assets, know your work, be confident without being a tool, go forth, and conquer.

The thing is ...

I have heard, personally, and read countless times:  "If you can get these things right, you WILL GET ATTENTION."  I've heard agents say, if you get these things right, you're ahead of 95% of the queries they see.  It is a song oft-sung, and it has a pleasing melody.

It gives a fat whack of us confidence that that's all there is to the magic.

Then we send out several dozen queries, all conforming to these general standards, and - not at all astonishingly - do not receive 100% requests for full manuscripts.  Incomprehensible!

No.

The unspoken fact is this:  the advice above constitutes only the minimum, and only the beginning.  Regardless of how many times I've heard that properly created queries are an extreme minority - and the "if you get this right you are better than ninety-some percent of the queries we see" figure is an often-heard quote, I can tell you - the full scope of a slush pile still leaves that magical ten, or five, or one percent of acceptable queries at a prodigious figure.  If an agent receives one to two hundred queries every week, you're still up against ten or twenty other competent queries in that week.  And you would be beyond fortunate to find an agent who took on even as many as five new authors in a year.  And not all of those new authors' properties even SELL.

So what they're not telling you is that there is still a lot more than just getting it mechanically, professionally correct.  There's actually making a connection with the agent - sparking their imagination with your story, your character(s).  There's the imperative of how good a story is, how artful your words are, how important it is to tell what you have to tell.  There's the chemistry, simply, of getting the right work in front of the RIGHT agent.

The little-known fact is:  any given agent might be the right one at one time and the wrong one at another.  I've had personal experience with this - an agent I'd love to work with was intrigued with my subject in 2011 - and, indeed, was a guiding force in my revisions.  I got priceless feedback, and significant correspondence with this query.  A year later, revisions done, this same agent was very frank in saying this wasn't his current area of interest, and it may take a very long time for him to read it again - if he ever does.  Even with my work in a better place, the agent himself wasn't in the sweet spot where my work would hit the target for him professionally.  Because it's not about "what I like" with agents, and most of them will tell you that very candidly.  The market can exert its demands, and any human being may be subject to fatigue with repetition.  "I loved Work X so much, but I knew I could not sell it" is hardly an uncommon phrase in agents' blogs.  This business - is a business, it's not always about "liking".

You can't make lightning strike, all you can do is set up a lightning rod and prepare, prepare, prepare.

And, keep the faith.  The work is the thing.  Give it a good vehicle, but it has to speak for itself.

Querying

Tonight I put aside the ghost story and the still unorganized researching, and got back on the querying horse again for the first time in TOO long (I realize, by looking at the dates of my most recent submissions).  Amazingly, the first two agencies/agents on the list I have to finish out were query-worthy, which is pretty unusual.  Most often, query research is a process of elimination; so how nice to be able to actually fire off two emails in relatively quick succession!

A good evening, all around.  Even with Spring Forward.

Elizabeth Chadwick's Agent ...

Elizabeth Chadwick is a friendly and enormously generous author I've become acquainted with at Historical Fiction Online's fora and who was kind enough to follow me back on Twitter as well.  Her periods fascinate me, and her research has come up at this blog of course more than once.  She has shared 29 tips from her own agent, Carole Blake, of the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency, posted at bang2write.com.  Highly recommended, of course, for authors in the querying stage!

Short, Sweet, and Oh So Many Good Points Here

Working authors:  read this.

On querying, and Twitter as a medium for conducting business.  Yes and yes and yes some more.  Read it twice if you have to.

Still Obstinate

One of the "musts" of being a writer in 2012 - apart from "must" be on FB and "must" be on Twitter and even "must" do some things I am actually willing and EAGER to get into in support of my novels - is that one "must" read what is out there now, know the market, be educated both in my genre and in what is likely to sell.  Stylistically, one "must" study contemporary lit and mass market.  Professionally, one "must" understand how to become a part of it.

I've gotten over my Special Snowflake phase, in which we ALL, every damned one of us, presume exemption from the work that is querying, polishing, shilling, meet-and-greeting.  I've gotten over my initial reluctance to create a presence (under my real name) online, and joined genre discussion boards and, yes, gone on Twitter to get myself some low-hanging follow action.  I've learned to enjoy and clearly respect the function of these activities (in the case of Historical Fiction Online and Absolute Write, this has hardly been a chore, though putting myself out there has always been difficult).

I still can't get over the fundamental feeling in my heart, though, that reading is such a deeply intimate experience, and so essentially a form of *entertainment*, that to forgo consuming what I want in it is still anathema.

This isn't to say I don't dig Iggulden's Conqueror series, or failed to notice Cornwell's latest Saxon release, nor that I'm not excited about Ben Kane and Spartacus (I need to ping the local bookstore to see if we can even get him to come visit!).

Oh, but it so IS to say that the Charles Major I have read recently, and the Edgar Rice Burroughs I am reading now, I would not trade, I would not give up.  There is only so much time for reading, and I am still a pouty and petulant child, obstinate in my believe that It Is Not Fair to ask me to follow any sort of scholastic reading program when ... I am a big girl.  I have earned the right to read what I wish to - not what I "have" to.  Not what I "must" ...

At its heart, reading is entertainment.  Part of entertainment is that it takes place in a space and time of personal autonomy.  We decide what we enjoy.  Entertainment fails when it's imposed on us by someone else (as opposed to inspired by someone else, shared with someone else, or SUGGESTED by someone else, and then catches fire for us personally).  How many times has someone pressed a book into your hand, sweaty with passion over it, told you you MUST read this ... and you just hated it?  Openmindedness is all very well, but without personal identification - and therefore personal motivation - the entertainment aspect of the picture is lost.  Time spent reading for anyone but yourself (or watching a movie or whatever you do for diversion) is a chore.

Even the research reading I did was something in my control, and though I became so absorbed in it I actually realized at some point a few years ago that I had not "read a book" for the sake of enjoyment for a period of months, that was because I became absorbed.  It was an act of will on my part to dunk myself into reading for work rather than pleasure - but of course even that had immense pleasures too.

Someday, perhaps, I will consider the "must" of reading the market an equal pleasure.  It isn't as if contemporary publishing is of no interest to me.  It's only that the loss, for me, of the incredible autonomy and intimacy, magnificent experience of reading, which for me is necessarily independent, rather nonconformist, perhaps a trifle contrarian and definitely antiquarian ... seems too much to ask.  And of a writer, of all the ironies.

Still obstinate.  But my mind is not utterly closed.  Only afraid.  I've lost enough of my childhood.  It doesn't seems sporting to kill off those ruins still standing.

Stolen From Leila

But ganked with love, my friend.  Because NONE of us is a pretty, pretty unicorn, and this is entertainingly put.

I probably got more #14s than anything else when I was more actively working the grind.

#14.  "It's Just Not For Me"
You can read that kind of rejection one of two ways: one, your story was good, but just not for that market/editor/moon phase; two, the editor is uncomfortable with truth or doesn’t want to offend anybody and so is gently limping away from saying anything even remotely offensive or controversial.

It was Dream Agent's #11 that brought me back to the drawing board.  The initial "send me your full" came on the strength of QUERY LETTER ALONE - no sample, no bio, no *nothing* but the letter.  I soared.  I've gotten some really nice elevens from agents I met in person etc., but this one was a bare whisper - which yielded me a response of INCREDIBLE depth, consideration, interest, and *conversationality*.  From an agent I have researched and would easily strip my head clean of teeth to work with.

Well, maybe just the fake ones.  But that's the whole frontage of my toothscape, y'all.

So the #11 from Dreamy just about killed me - until I clarified - "I can re-query this with you, yes?" and Dreams said YES.  Oh my achin' head.  Over the moon.  And not "over it" in the bad sense, either.

The detailed-without-being-long-winded critique was spot on, of course, and has been the focus of my revisions (duh).

And just reading the 25 points at the link is firing me up all over again.  I've got GOLD in my wallet.  Gotta bank it.

SEO

I spent some time last night performing surgery on my keywords, making sure all the post previously labeled "novel #1" now also have a tag with the actual title included - but also seeing what I could do to optimize searchability.  Leila may know better than to try to get me to Tweet (hee), but that's not because I am against the idea of marketing the blog.  "Research", for instance, has been refined to two categories - one being "historical fiction research" and the other "query research".  Much more useful, much more likely to be search strings, and probably a better organizational tool for the blog itself.

After the usual period of coyness about my subject, once the manuscript was completed I stopped talking so archly about "my barbarian king" and brought him out of the closet, so King Clovis I is now a ubiquitous tag.  One of these days, being the first novelist to get him on the stage of English-language publishing, I will be the major search-results hitter for him - and it is necessary to lay some groundwork for that too.  There'll also be some content upcoming, highlighting Queen/St. Clotilde, the Salian Franks, and some of the research I enjoyed most along the way.

I'm trying to think about what to discuss regarding the work in progress, and - though that is more immediate - it is also something on which I have less perspective, being smack in the middle of that forest.  So content beyond The Ax and the Vase will probably remain less prolific - but I do mean to try to concentrate on my subjects and the work.

And, though nobody here ever seems to want to raise their hand, I will waste they keystrokes to say it:  feedback is welcome and encouraged!

Take the Con II

This holiday weekend has been just the concluding part of what has actually been a vacation; I took off on Thursday and Friday too, so am in the midst of five days off and enjoying it very much.  The highlight, of course, has been JRW's conference.

The marquee guest this year, Kitty Kelly, was unable to attend, as her husband was recently hospitalized, which is more than an understandable reason for a change in plans.  One of the agents, too, had a very late-breaking reversal; after already being on his way to come to Richmond, Jason Allen Ashlock learned of a death in his family and had to turn around.  Apparently, he has committed to reach out to each one of us he had been scheduled to meet with at the Conference, to set up a Skype or phone call or some rain-check meeting.  I call that a pretty incredibly generous gesture, especially given the circumstances, and am duly impressed by commitment like that.  It's unlikely I'm alone in wishing peace and sympathy for his family.

And so I started the conference "off the hook" in a way.  My agent meeting was off, one of the other best agents there I've already queried, and the publishing pros there have nothing to do with historical fiction.  In a way, the years the Conference don't offer me any direct prospects are freeing, because they provide all the benefits of the education, support, and enjoyment the Conference always does, and skip some of the stress.  It's always fun to set a meeting, of course, but with as much work as I've been putting in lately - and with the fact that I am working on some revisions for an agent interested enough to put me to work on them (this is me, totally not squeeing and being 100% insufferable that I am working on revisions for an agent, by the way ...) - it was nice to embark on the event without pressure to perform.


I have to say, thanks to a couple of the Sarcastic Broads, to JRW's excellent Administrative Director, to all the volunteers, and of course to the guests, it was a great conference this year, not missing a beat even if it was missing a planned speaker and agent.  It was relaxed and rich, and went off without a hitch.  Smooth as silk - and fun, to boot.

Perhaps the unique feature of JRW's conference is the accessibility of the participants.  Guests who come for this event are asked to stay for all of it, to eat lunch with everyone, to be available in the halls and between their panels:  you don't necessarily need to have an appointment with an agent to have access to them.  Last year when I talked to Michelle Brower and she asked me to query her, it was not in a formal pitch 5-minute meeting, but just a chat about a colleague of hers after a panel.

I've learned that sitting out the panels, too, can be relaxing.  If one of the ones I am thinking about is overcrowded, or in the dark room with the uncomfortable chairs, or if I have just taken SO many notes at the last one and want to decompress (or, on years I am having a meeting, if I don't want to disrupt a discussion by coming-and-going from it), it can be rewarding to stay out in the lobby and chat with people as they're about to meet with an agent, or - amazingly - actually work on my writing!  The venue is a very nice one, and this year the weather was extraordinarily beautiful, so sitting out a period was a bit of a zen relief.

This year, sitting one out, I met Kevin Hanrahan, whose name I advise everyone to remember.  His novel is one I can't wait to read, and suspect an awful lot of us will embrace.  On top of being a likely success as an author, he's also an active service member, a very nice and generous guy (he agreed to read my battle scene!), and a family man.  It'd be impossible not to wish the guy excesses of success, and with the idea he's pitching, he promises to find it.

I also got to chat with Mike Albo, who, on top of being funny, turns out to be ANOTHER one of those friendly, supportive, enthusiastic, and infectious people the Conference is simply riddled with.  Likewise Joe  Williams, who did not have my dad as a professor (hee), and yet somehow managed to turn out to be a dazzlingly smart and also very nice guy nonetheless.

It's almost a bewildering abundance, the talent and charm JRW seems to attract.

The exception to this statement is notable, actually.  There was one guest this year who put on a show such as I've never seen before at any JRW event.  At one of the largest panels I attended, we were treated to a guest literally positioning herself with her back to the moderator, rolling her eyes at said mod, evincing obvious and 100% unnecessary antipathy quite publicly, and making an immense show of both boredom (whenever she was not speaking) and overdramatic snobbery.  It was pretty amazing, and devastatingly ugly.  The moderator largely on the receiving end of this Mean Girls snottiness evinced zero awareness of it, either because she couldn't see the show (this person's back being firmly to her) or because she is, you know, a GROWNUP and not feeling the need to engage pubescent antics.  I always liked this moderator, but am now firmly On Their Side now, and entirely disgusted by a guest I would hardly have guessed to be a petty, clique-ish little wench.  And, yes - I'm aware this succumbs to the clique dynamic.  But she started it!

I wasn't alone in noting her rather stagey antipathy, nor in being throughly put off by the show.  It was the single most revolting piece of behavior I've ever seen at any JRW event - and it was, in fact, the single piece of revolting behavior I've really ever seen at all.  (Poorly socialized people with unfortunate interpersonal skills really do not hold a candle, though certainly there've been a couple of those.)


***


The closing event of the weekend was Pitchapalooza - an event not ideal for the faint of heart or weak of knee.  Like the First Pages Critiques, this challenge asks writers to bare their works.  Unlike first pages - Pitchapalooza is not anonymous ... not done for you by readers onstage ... and is utterly direct.

Also unlike first pages ... it turns out that the likelihood of finding your name drawn out of the box, to present your pitch live in front of everybody, aren't so small.  With First Pages, which take a little while to read, and a little while to discuss, if they get to read as many as ten of them, it's a bumper crop.

With Pitchapalooza, there's a one minute limit on each author.

So there is time for a whole lot of people to read.

So the odds go way UP, that you will get chosen.


All of this is irrelevant to me.  Because the odds of being chosen FIRST out of the box ...

Turned out to be 100%, for me.


Leila tells me the look on my face when they read my name FIRST was worth a million dollars.

I can say this:  being chosen first was pretty painful!  But David Henry Sterry and Arielle Eckstut were remarkably generous - they clearly know what this is like for writers - and asked for a round of applause for me before I even began, and were pretty kind (and VERY HELPFUL!) in providing first-feedback.

I'm glad I didn't have to follow Kevin Hanrahan.

I'm sorry I didn't get to hear some of the repeat comments they gave to most participants, so I could edit briefly and address some obviously typical issues with pitches.

I'm interested by the fact that some of what my work overall needs done on it is common to what they observed about the pitch itself!  (It's well written and *rather* engaging, but needs "lusciousness" and really has to grab its audience harder by the lapels.)

I'm embarrassed that I was a bit disheveled at the time we got started, and didn't have time to acclimate to the event and prepare myself for it, and so stood there looking wildly, NAKEDLY nervous, my hair a bit of a mess, and my entire body shaking while everybody watched and at least two cameras TAPED ... heh.

But I was gratified by the kindness of several folks afterward (see also - the comment on my post below, from my Frank-ophilic friend Jeff Sypeck [this is as distinct from francophilic, fella babies]), which included Mike Albo saying the book sounds cool, and a girl named Cathy who said she missed my actual pitch but heard the feedback and wanted to know about the book, and Joe Williams, to whom I said I liked his pitch better and he said he liked mine (... UM ... and can I just say, the White House correspondent for POLITICO liked my pitch better than his - this, a guy so insanely calm and poised I was wishing I'd taken some sort of drug just so I could have appeared less of a trembling wreck and wondering how he did that).

I mean, I stood in front of Karl Marlentes and gave this speech.  I stood in front of Michelle Brower (ON the judging panel, by the way), who's already (so generously!) rejected my query.  I stood in front of all my Broads, and EVERYONE there (including that one Mean Girl) and shook, and faltered, and had trouble breathing, and managed to get through it.

FIRST.

And took ten minutes to come down.  Hee.  My handwritten notes on what they had to say are hilariously quavering, the pen half-digging through the page in physical translation of the mental pressure!


I have to say - Pitchapalooza?  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  Woot!

Joe Williams said this, and I will close with it (as we Broads both opened and closed Pitchapalooza itself):  "They say you have to do one thing every day that scares you.  I think we've gotten a month's worth of scare in, doing those pitches."

WORD, Joe.  And a hug and a high five.