My friend Mike sent me a long list of agents who rejected his queries seeking representation. At least 8 of them are on my list, so there is a chance that I'll get the same. It's interesting to see that many agencies are no longer seeking new clients or accepting queries. I can't imagine being in a business that stops looking for the products it sells. But there are only so many books published in a year, and a lot more writers than ever before. Maybe TV or at least film is the market, since there are now 800 channels, all pretty much showing the same shows over and over.
Tom Russell is back from his European tour. Read about it at his blog, Notes from The Borderland. http://www.russelltom.blogspot.com/ I started listening to Tom this year, but found an affinity existed from five years ago. When I started my novel, The Barricades of Heaven, the main character's name is Rooster, but I had no idea that we could end up with a sideways reference to Gallo Del Cielo, Spanish for Rooster from heaven. This is one of Tom's earliest songs, and can be found at YouTube in a brief search. And Gallo Del Cielo has a sideways reference to Nathanel West's Day of the Locust, where a rooster fight is a major scene. Rooster takes the side of the immigrant workers in Miami just as Tom has championed the Mexicans and Native Americans in song and poetry. So when you find music and songs you enjoy, maybe you heard them being written a long time ago, and just didn't know it.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Guide To Literary Agents
I bought the 2008 Guide to Literary Agents edited by Chuck Sambuchino from Writer's Digest Press. It has a lot of information I wished I'd found earlier. The section on Query Letters is particularly well done. It shows me the mistakes I made in the 10 I've sent out already. The letter should be closer to business letters I've traditionally written to sell computers or services.
The Internet sources make it sound like a three part blurb from a book cover. That's not exactly it. Anyway, I will be doing some snail-mail queries today, including the SASE required to get rejected on my own dime.
Read The Perfect Pitch by Jillian Manus of Manus & Associates Literary Agency:
http://www.manuslit.com/flash/index.html
If the link doesn't go directly there, it's in the Info For Writers sub-menu on the left. Outstanding information, a presentation she made at San Diego University
The project (as I refer to the sale of my novel) will take months. This I know from reading other writers experiences in Poets&Writers or at their blogs or in interviews. Failure is not an option, as Ed Harris says in Apollo 13. In addition to making a career change from salesman to writer, or wage-slave to artist, I have over a period of time gained the trust and friendship of others who would like to do the same thing. I need to find the way to get my novel to market and sold, and then document what worked and what failed, so others, especially those like myself too old to go into MFA programs, can see that yes, it can still be done. The responsibilty to friends and family is my strongest motivator. A man should be able to produce something on his own that changes his life: by writing, painting, sculpting, making music, dancing, whatever it takes to show
This is who I really am. This is my real work.
Of course, making the art product accessible is the key. I am happy that I wrote an entertaining novel, a story that is like no other, with humor and suspense and naughty bits all going to promote my vision of this crazy world we live in. I think my vision is shared by a great many people frustrated by the news we read, by absurd situations like where the photos of the babies born to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will sell for millions of dollars, while a poor woman is left to die in a hospital waiting room, or kids won't get lunch money because the Conservatives running their government decided to cut back yet another program, while blocking a tax on windfall profits by the oil companies.
We have to write and read and get it out. Sooner or later, the opportunity will be taken away.
The Internet sources make it sound like a three part blurb from a book cover. That's not exactly it. Anyway, I will be doing some snail-mail queries today, including the SASE required to get rejected on my own dime.
Read The Perfect Pitch by Jillian Manus of Manus & Associates Literary Agency:
http://www.manuslit.com/flash/index.html
If the link doesn't go directly there, it's in the Info For Writers sub-menu on the left. Outstanding information, a presentation she made at San Diego University
The project (as I refer to the sale of my novel) will take months. This I know from reading other writers experiences in Poets&Writers or at their blogs or in interviews. Failure is not an option, as Ed Harris says in Apollo 13. In addition to making a career change from salesman to writer, or wage-slave to artist, I have over a period of time gained the trust and friendship of others who would like to do the same thing. I need to find the way to get my novel to market and sold, and then document what worked and what failed, so others, especially those like myself too old to go into MFA programs, can see that yes, it can still be done. The responsibilty to friends and family is my strongest motivator. A man should be able to produce something on his own that changes his life: by writing, painting, sculpting, making music, dancing, whatever it takes to show
This is who I really am. This is my real work.
Of course, making the art product accessible is the key. I am happy that I wrote an entertaining novel, a story that is like no other, with humor and suspense and naughty bits all going to promote my vision of this crazy world we live in. I think my vision is shared by a great many people frustrated by the news we read, by absurd situations like where the photos of the babies born to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will sell for millions of dollars, while a poor woman is left to die in a hospital waiting room, or kids won't get lunch money because the Conservatives running their government decided to cut back yet another program, while blocking a tax on windfall profits by the oil companies.
We have to write and read and get it out. Sooner or later, the opportunity will be taken away.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Check This Out
James W. Hall, author and professor extraordinaire, has a great blog:
http://jameswhall.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html
You can subscribe to Writer's Market for $3.99 a month.
http://www.writersmarket.com/
Lynn Frewelling says query letters to literary agents can sound like real letters:
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/query.htm
Joshua Bodwell writes on Andre Dubus in Poets&Writers:
http://www.pw.org/content/art_reading_andre_dubus_we_don%E2%80%99t_have_live_great_lives
http://jameswhall.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html
You can subscribe to Writer's Market for $3.99 a month.
http://www.writersmarket.com/
Lynn Frewelling says query letters to literary agents can sound like real letters:
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/query.htm
Joshua Bodwell writes on Andre Dubus in Poets&Writers:
http://www.pw.org/content/art_reading_andre_dubus_we_don%E2%80%99t_have_live_great_lives
Monday, July 14, 2008
Goodbye, Bud Bowl
Budweiser Sold To Belgians:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/14/anheuser.inbev.ap/index.html
Snake-handling Pastor Arrested:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/13/snake.bust.ap/index.html
Bull Semen Jumps Fence to Axis of Evil:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/bizarre/article697414.ece
Beer, The Best Health Food:
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/article694104.ece
First Photos of Bradgelina Twins Worth More Than Your Whole Life:
http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx/?news=322643>1=28101
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/14/anheuser.inbev.ap/index.html
Snake-handling Pastor Arrested:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/13/snake.bust.ap/index.html
Bull Semen Jumps Fence to Axis of Evil:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/bizarre/article697414.ece
Beer, The Best Health Food:
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/article694104.ece
First Photos of Bradgelina Twins Worth More Than Your Whole Life:
http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx/?news=322643>1=28101
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Novelist at Work
Today's work will consist of making lasagna and drinking as much Valpolicella as I can. I've been baby-sitting all weekend, the safe alternative to water-boarding. I am ready to confess. Whatever you want. Just give me a few moments to myself.
Making lasagna is one of those handed down traditions. My great grandparents were named Didio, and came from Italy to settle in Portsmouth, Virginia. Over the years, their recipe for lasagna has been bastardized by family members until it comes down to my version. I use cottage cheese, cream cheese and an egg to replace the bland ricotta cheese none of us have ever like. I make sauce from tomato puree, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and water, starting out with minced garlic and onion in olive oil in the bottom of the pot, sauted. You cook the sauce and reduce it slightly, adding grated parmesan cheese, basil, Italian parsley, salt, pepper, sugar, a little oregano, garlic powder, whatever else it tastes like it's missing. I don't put meat in the lasagna, it makes it too heavy. I make meatballs and cook them in the sauce after browning them or microwaving them brown.
The whole process takes forever but makes tons of delicious lasagna that gets better after a day in the fridge. Getting my 4 year old granddaughter to help make meatballs is always a gas, and drinking wine during the process helps insure no artsy-fartsyness creeps in and spoils the day.
Making lasagna is one of those handed down traditions. My great grandparents were named Didio, and came from Italy to settle in Portsmouth, Virginia. Over the years, their recipe for lasagna has been bastardized by family members until it comes down to my version. I use cottage cheese, cream cheese and an egg to replace the bland ricotta cheese none of us have ever like. I make sauce from tomato puree, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and water, starting out with minced garlic and onion in olive oil in the bottom of the pot, sauted. You cook the sauce and reduce it slightly, adding grated parmesan cheese, basil, Italian parsley, salt, pepper, sugar, a little oregano, garlic powder, whatever else it tastes like it's missing. I don't put meat in the lasagna, it makes it too heavy. I make meatballs and cook them in the sauce after browning them or microwaving them brown.
The whole process takes forever but makes tons of delicious lasagna that gets better after a day in the fridge. Getting my 4 year old granddaughter to help make meatballs is always a gas, and drinking wine during the process helps insure no artsy-fartsyness creeps in and spoils the day.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
New Novel Procedural
I finished my novel The Barricades of Heaven, after years of work and procrastination. Of course I think it's the greatest story ever, National Book Award candidate, nominated for 7 Oscars, after 124 weeks on the Bestseller List.
Now I have to prove my case. The first thing I need is an agent. The companies who publish books do not actually talk to the people who write books until they absolutely have to. You reach publishers through literary agents. It turns out that literary agents, whose sole job it is to find books to sell to the publishers, don't actually talk to the people who write books either. But they will talk to the writer if the book writer will follow procedures, go through a certain amount of hazing, like joining a good fraternity.
The most important step is the query letter. Check anywhere on the Internet, and you will see that the query letter is actually more important than the book itself. The query letter is from the writer to the agent, asking the agent to sell the product of years of work, pretty please pretty please. But the form letter cannot be written like a letter from one human being to another. Agents don't have time to read letters from humans. The query letter needs to have a form acceptable to agents, and OCR scanners, everywhere.
This format, according to AgentQuery.com, is: a three paragraph one page letter consisting of
1) The Hook
2) The Mini-synopsis
3)Your writer's biography
and then the thank you, which should never sound like grovelling, but always convey that you will grovel, if requested.
http://www.agentquery.com/writer_hq.aspx
This is the only format acceptable to the only people allowed to talk to the only people who publish books. Writers who stray from this format die in obscurity. The best-selling authors are all experts at writing query letters, some of which are actually BETTER than their books.
So there is Step One for all you writers out there looking to get published. Please follow this, and Google other important protocols as well. A great resource is Authorlink.com. Check it out.
Meanwhile, I will be working on a good query letters. The book took four years. The letter should take three. I will be posting the results accordingly.
Now I have to prove my case. The first thing I need is an agent. The companies who publish books do not actually talk to the people who write books until they absolutely have to. You reach publishers through literary agents. It turns out that literary agents, whose sole job it is to find books to sell to the publishers, don't actually talk to the people who write books either. But they will talk to the writer if the book writer will follow procedures, go through a certain amount of hazing, like joining a good fraternity.
The most important step is the query letter. Check anywhere on the Internet, and you will see that the query letter is actually more important than the book itself. The query letter is from the writer to the agent, asking the agent to sell the product of years of work, pretty please pretty please. But the form letter cannot be written like a letter from one human being to another. Agents don't have time to read letters from humans. The query letter needs to have a form acceptable to agents, and OCR scanners, everywhere.
This format, according to AgentQuery.com, is: a three paragraph one page letter consisting of
1) The Hook
2) The Mini-synopsis
3)Your writer's biography
and then the thank you, which should never sound like grovelling, but always convey that you will grovel, if requested.
http://www.agentquery.com/writer_hq.aspx
This is the only format acceptable to the only people allowed to talk to the only people who publish books. Writers who stray from this format die in obscurity. The best-selling authors are all experts at writing query letters, some of which are actually BETTER than their books.
So there is Step One for all you writers out there looking to get published. Please follow this, and Google other important protocols as well. A great resource is Authorlink.com. Check it out.
Meanwhile, I will be working on a good query letters. The book took four years. The letter should take three. I will be posting the results accordingly.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Love It
Woman Kills Husband With Fold-out Couch:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25606488/?GT1=43001
Betancourt's Husband Got Icy Greeting:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/10/betancourt.husband.ap/index.html
After hounding Patsy Ramsey to her death, the world press confronts DNA evidence she and her husband had nothing to do with the murder of JonBenet:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/09/jonbenet.dna/index.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25606488/?GT1=43001
Betancourt's Husband Got Icy Greeting:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/10/betancourt.husband.ap/index.html
After hounding Patsy Ramsey to her death, the world press confronts DNA evidence she and her husband had nothing to do with the murder of JonBenet:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/09/jonbenet.dna/index.html
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