Wanna Be Need Not Apply

Ugh! I've started down the "Looking for an Agent" path for Festival Madness. I have compiled a new list. As always, it seems promising, but while compiling, I once again ran into the situation where some agents forbid queries by the unrecommended, unpublished writer. No self-published or POD writers, either. POD is a technology and it is hard to see why there is a taint to a technology, but so be it.

I am vindictive enough to hope that all of these so snooty, exclusive agents miss the next Dan Brown, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich and Joseph Conrad.

Anyway, there is now a list and "how to contact" advice and all those good things, so just do it, as the commercial advices.

Email contacts, while quick , seem fraught with danger. They don't friggin' answer if they don't feel like it. Did the agent even receive the email? Off into cyberspace. It ain't fun. It ain't easy. It definitely ain't for the fragile ego or the faint of heart.

Onward.

The world I must live in always seems to encompass an exclusivity beyond me. As a kid, I lived places where you were shit unless you were born in that town. In college, I came from the wrong state, wrong high school, belonged to the wrong literary society. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

When I was a young suburban mom, for a few years, things were O.K. Right house, right neighborhood, right everything. Not exclusive, but welcoming.

Moved to Boston. Right suburb, wrong precinct. Not a native. Not a Brahmin. Not ethnic. Not Catholic, not much of anything. Most of my friends (not quite all) are from somewhere else. Boston is not a friendly town.

As a computer programmer, I wrote in COBOL, the least respected language, old mainframe technology. The sneering never stopped. Of course, the paychecks didn't either.

Became a writer. A genre writer. Oh shit, now it's worse than junior high. Not published properly, not young and skinny, not ethnic, nor foreign, not literary, not visible. There is the story oft told at writer's conferences that one day a published writer will ask to see your work, offer some pithy comments and will recommend you to his/her agent or publisher or whatever. Folks, this is bull. Everybody is running scared and well, it's like the convoy driving down a dangerous neighborhood in Baghdad and you are in Arab dress and thumbing a ride. Will the convoy stop?

So, gloom and doom. I must be the world's biggest masochist, because after four books, I'm en route to promote the 5th. Why? Why? Why?

Dunno. Just gotta do it. Must have succumbed to Festival Madness. (!)

Grapeshot

Writing Down the Moans

O.K., bad pun. There's been a dust-up, almost a brouhaha on one of the writing listserves I monitor. Seems Left Coast Crime and Murder in the Midlands, two mystery conferences, have decided that only MWA approved publishers can sell books at these conferences, leaving out scores of self-published and small independents who for whatever reason aren't on MWA's list of "real" publishers. Lots of bad feelings and name-calling. Seems a bit Draconian that, for example, the Hilliard & Harris authors can't sell books at these conferences, or the Oceanside, and a lot of other presses. MWA now says a "real" publisher must have a book run of 500 or more, which leaves out the POD presses. Bear in mind POD is a print technology that says nothing about the quality of the writing. And said publisher also has to pay at least $1000.00 advance. Well, one would hope.

I was grandfathered into MWA when the rules were loosey-goosey, not that I didn't have a "real" publisher who assigned editors and cover artists and all that stuff. No money upfront from the authors. Generous payments (not the right word) for each book sold. However, it was a no-advance, POD outfitt, long gone belly up. So I slink and skulk and realize that I am not one of the chosen, and that it was authors like me who they changed the rules to keep out. Not a happy thought. Just one more reason to suck it up of which there are always many. So I have a great deal of sympathy for the writers with their noses pressed against the fence.

Rumor has it that Sisters In Crime is going to the "not all writers are equal" stance in order to promote the more traditionally published , but that's just a rumor. Well, I've sat through a lot of meeting where I have to shut up. Builds character. The haves and have-nots are in a deadly embrace that nobody is gonna win anytime soon. Horse manure at five paces anyone? That is what Abraham Lincoln reputedly said when challenged to a duel. One of my favorite quotes.

I've finished the third draft of Festival Madness, and now it has to lie fallow for a spell. A good friend from college days has done a line edit of Promiscuous Mode, and I can't thank her enough. So need to revisit that book a bit. Haven't sent it out as often as I could. It's my writing group's favorite book and it had a rocky start with an agent requesting the full manuscript and never responding to email, mail, phone, or anything. Off on the wrong foot.
But it's a traditional mystery, not a cozy, not a thriller, and there aren't any crafts or really loveable old ladies. Medium boiled? One cat, two murders, a little adultery. Some food, some fishing, a sleazy casino. Works for me. So one more pass and out into the world it goes again. Another one of my babies.

Lots of plans underfoot. The Information Systems memoir, the 1928 California book, and now a young adult that takes place in Germany in the last months of the war. And a web site class that will be the kick in the pants I need to redo my long neglected site. So stuff is happening. Short stories. The Meth House explosion. (The book, not the real thing. ) Horrors!

Better get busy. What do you think?

Grapeshot