Ten Years to No Avail - an Epiphany

With apologies to James Joyce. This afternoon, sitting at my desk, bored out of my mind, I had a thought that pierced me like a knife.

I haven't sold my books because the agents and editors are right. They didn't say it in so many words, but no one wants to read them.

John Q Public doesn't want to read fictionalized accounts of computer crime. Boring! The general public is either non-readers, or guys who read non-fiction and would want blood and guts and techno-thillers or else Computerworld. Women, who read most of the fiction and particularly most of the mysteries like touchie-feelie. Familes. Children. Relationships. Psycbo-therapists and caterers. Grief and tears and sturm and drang. Mrs. Marple. Why the hell would anyone want to read about a little team of cyber-sleuths who trek all over the world solving believable (well, sort of) computer crimes. Who gives a damn if someone is flogging a data warehouse to the old Stasis so they can blackmail their countrymen? All a bunch of former commies, anyhow! Who cares what happens in an office? Who cares about corporate America? We work there. We hate it. We sure as hell don't want to read about it. Yuck!

So the futility of the last nine years (when I was actively trying to sell one book or another) has sucker-punched me.
This is not good.
Plan A. I finish the current book which has good characters and Burning Man and some plot points that may keep a general readership happy. De-emphasize the techno-babble. Write my 1928 California book which has no techno-babble whatsoever and a decent plot and lots of family stuff, touchie-feelie to the max, and a little bit dark.

The next cybersleuth book will find my heroine and her sidekick on their own, far from corporate America, solving identity theft, internet stalking, internet porn crimes, all the good trite and true stuff that may keep the old ladies reading. Jeez, have I been dumb for a reputedly smart person!

The thing is, no one ever said, "your concept sucks." Not my writing group or my colleagues or anyone. My writing group said things like, "she can't wear Chanel lipstick. Everyone identifies Chanel with perfume. Maybe you should sort of explain that Chanel makes other cosmetics. Or change the lipstick to Revlon."

Of course, I have to admit that no one ever said, "what a brilliant concept! I love it." No one ever said that. I should have listened to the silence. So right now I am pretty much dead in the water. A concept 20 years ahead of its time. If there ever is or will be a time. Shit.

A major major suck it up. Well, at least I learned to write. Cyber-sex, here I come! Anyone for identify theft?

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