"Fishing by Obstinate Isles."

My robot fish story was rejected! It's one of the favorite things I've written. The readers did not get it, were not engaged, and it did "not resonate."

I think my writing group gave me bad advise apropos the beginning, but that can be fixed. I'll send it out again, of course, because I am so taken with the character.

How am I feeling about this? Absolutely rotten. Ezra Pound said it better. "Out of key with his time" and "fishing by obstinate isles." Yup.


Hugh Selwyn Mauberly [excerpt]

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old scene. Wrong from the start--
No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half-savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;
[idmen gar toi pant, hos eni Troiei]
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks small lee-way
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.
His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate isles;
Observed the elegance of Circe's hair
Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.
Unaffected by "the march of events,"
He passed from men's memory in l'an trentuniesme
De son eage; the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.

Why do I even remember this old "stuff" from college English? At least when I give a speech at Toastmasters, I've always lauded for 'colorful speech.'

Onward, onward.

The David Lodge book, Therapy, is good, well, therapy. I laugh like an idiot every night when I am reading it.

Grapeshot

In Samuel Becket's Words

I "discovered" Samuel Becket as an undergraduate, and recall driving to the University of Houston from the Rice campus to see "Krapp's Last Tape" and "Waiting for Godot." In the intervening years, we saw Beckett produced at the ART in Cambridge, a controversial performance that outraged Beckett. Water over the dam.

This morning, still feeling the sting of the last rejection of Festival Madness, I was trolling through the New York Times Book Review and in the ending essay found Geoff Nicholson's musings on being prolific. That would not be me, since I write at the rate of a book every three years, an unpublished book. They keep accumulating.

This is what Samuel Becket said:
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

Fail better. I like that.

Happy Sunday. I just made a pot of curried cauliflower soup and tonight we're celebrating the Chinese New Year belatedly with chicken and vegetables in lettuce cups. Sounds good. Ethnic food rocks.

Grapeshot

Sucking It Up More Than Usual

So, kids, I'm going to begin querying big time: 10 queries per month for World of Mirrors, same for Promiscuous Mode and likewise for Festival Madness. That's 30 queries a month, which is painful but do-able. I'm also going to submit to a few more publishers.

Moving forward, inching along, and no doubt plenty of rejection. Everyone says the writing is good, and therefore the story must be the stumbling block. Need to plug away at my 20's book, too. Wanted it done by August, but I don't think that's possible, but I could write the major scenes and then string them together.

Nothing could be weirder than Festival Madness where I began writing in the middle. I need a new query for World of Mirrors

The courses I've taken on hooks and synopses have not really been as helpful as I had hoped.

It would be nice to have a few comments now and then. I know there are readers, but without posts, the blog stays in the toilet on the Technorati rankings. Please?

Grapeshot

Festival Madness Gets Its First Rejection

Each book, one thinks, "this time it will be different," but there's a sameness to rejection, like waves lapping on the beach.

There are agents who have one or two "token" female clients and the rest are male and these agents generally like "guy books," with guy humor and guy adventures and guy stuff, so why did I even approach this agent? Well, he was at Sleuthfest, and that's the only reason.

And of course he said that,"your idea does not sound like something that I would be interested in representing." So there.

The trouble is, this isn't obviously a "girl" book, either, unless you associate girl's with technology and Molotov cocktails and adulterous behavior. Not chic lit. Not hen lit. Not cozy, not traditional. Not saleable? Well, we shall see. One of these days I'm going to have to scream, "fuck it!' and either a) stop writing and earn real money or b) suck it up and learn to write commercial fiction in a genre with the convensions observed. Anyone reading my books would understand that isn't exactly possible in any sincere kind of way. One of the things I really really like about Antonioni's movies is that he has alienated women and that's something you don't see very often and they aren't alienated in a femaley, touch-feeley way but honest-to-god-alientated. Love it.

God knows, World of Mirrors with it's now 60+ rejections does not appear to be saleable with the East German locale and the technology and history and bad guys all thrown into the mix with a dose of humor and craziness.

My mother said, "you always have to learn everything the hard way." To this day, I wonder if there is an easy way.

Our small guest is having difficulties with Roman Numerals, and like riding a bicycle, they are something you always know once you've learned them. The hard way. Or the easy way.

I have to buy a greeting card, drop off the cleaning, buy some groceries, make a tart and all kinds of unalienated female types of activities.

One of these days. . . .

Grapeshot, sucking it up big time

Sucking It Up is a Universal Experience

Proust, Joyce, and others have had to suck it up, too. Even F. Scott Fitzgerald.

http://www.columbusalive.com/?sec=upfront&story=alive/2007/1206/u-mental.html

I don't compare myself to them, novelist of computer crime as I am, but it's nice to be in good company.

Grapeshot

Recipe en route, as well as photos of last night's broccoli-mushroom quiche. So stop by again soon.

Tonight it the party at the local mystery book store (Kate's) and I'm taking a lovely appetizer.

Grapeshot

Rejection Revisited

Cripes, another rejection letter today--from a query sent out in 2006, so old I had consigned it to the "never gonna here from this agent" list. Believe it or not, I have such a list and for World of Mirrors it contains 17 agents.

World of Mirrors now has 73 rejections, including the "aint' never" queries.
Promiscuous Mode has 43.

I took a look back in history and The Shadow Warriors only had 39 rejections before I found an e-publisher with an editor, a copy-editor, a cover-designer and all that good stuff. Too bad they were underfunded and disorganized. The first and forever on the closet shelf book, Witness Be Wary, has about 40 rejections. They're in a file drawer, I guess. There's something about the number 40, be it age or rejections that strikes terror. At a prior Edgars Week in NYC I talked to an author who was rejected 113 times before he finally found an agent, and she sold his book. You gotta have the right stuff, which means persistence.

Still, sometimes, and this has been one of those weeks, persistence seems like stupidity, like cluelessness, like the inability to face facts. I've never been a Pollyanna-ish person. Does anyone remember Pollyanna? An upbeat young lady who never got down, who played something called the "glad game." Sheesh! I think I'll Google Pollyanna.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna

In case you weren't doing math, the total rejections for 4 novels are at 195. It's a wonder I can still sit here and write a sentence. Last night I cobbled together a new beginning for Festival Madness. Three short paragraphs that set the scene. I've noticed that most books start with "telling," not showing. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, I was a posthumous child, the sea is high again today, and so forth. As in Tell Me A Story. Never heard anyone say, "show me a story." Of course, one shows in the telling, but this showing business is kind of out of control. If you want to show everything, write poetry. Someones a couple of good telling paragraphs can do the work of whole scenes of showing.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Ponder that for a while.

Grapeshot

Rejection, kicking the cat, what to eat and sundry topics

Yet another rejection--this time for Promiscuous Mode which is climbing up there in reject count. This was was one of the first agents ever I queried for the book I gave up on, which was the only book that agents ever responded to in a more or less positive way, my first book. Stupid plot. All over the place. Oh well.

Results oriented
Everlasting hope
Just keep on querying
Excrement happens
Can't help kicking the cat
Thanks for every personal note
I must be crazy to keep doing this
Optimism is alive
No reason to set one's hair on fire

I would never kick the cats, they are such lovers and are always there for you. Thisbe plays the "foot game," which consists of nuzzle, nuzzle, lick, lick, nip, nip on bare feet and then repeats. If I say "foot game," she knows what it means. Also understands "catnip" and "do you want to go into the garage?" Also, "would you like to be brushed?" Well, with all the catering, why wouldn't she understand? To repeat a well-known maxim, dogs have masters, cats have "staff."

Congratulations to my buddy who has lost 2o pounds on Jennie Craig and looks terrific. Grapeshot has flunked out of every diet except Atkins, and currently we are having salad main courses twice each week and that seems to be good for losing the odd pound. We are doing bread sticks (grissini) or rye crisp and trying to cool it with the cheese.

Summer is good for fruits and vegetables: So far this week:
apples, oranges, lemons, limes, watermelon,cranberries,blueberries,raspberries, pears, bananas.

On the veggie front: lettuce, tomatoes, cukes,olives, carrots, zucchini, summer squash, peppers,parsley,dill, cilantro,oregano,mushrooms,garlic,onions,chives and scallions and green beans. Variety is good.

I fixed the first chapter of Festival Madness and it seems O.K. I drop a body on page one, paragraph one, but there's not a lot of action. Thinking about the dreaded prologue from the murderer's point of view. Opinion is divided about Prologues, but they can jump the reader into the action, get the pulse pounding, ask a lot of unanswered questions, then the story can start in a sedate manner. Dunno. Dunno. When a murder happens offstage, then the reader is distanced. No more computer crime novels. Apparently they have no appeal to agents and publishers and in theory readers, although I have heard differently.

My garden starting to swell with blossoms, and my heart beats a little faster each time I inspect it and see how the flowers and tomatoes have grown.

Raccoons finally figured out how to raid suet feeder. Thistleseed feeder on the ground this a.m., hummingbird feeder empty. Lots of extra tasks in summer. How had I forgotten?

Onward,

Grapeshot

Practice for Life

How treacherous is memory, or how true? This weekend, at an alumni event, I stared at a woman, remembering her 21 year old face, now ruined by sun and time and even life, I suppose.

She had been and was still tall and blonde. She had two friends, twins, who were also tall and blonde, and the three of them would sit in on a sofa in the middle of the student center looking like royalty. Stiff necks on unbending stalks. They didn’t talk to anyone, not even each other, and once a guy asked if they were deaf mutes.

I was amused.

At this university at this time there were the INS and the outs. The INS came from a good neighborhoods and good high schools and had money and the right clothes, the right cars, the right stuff, you might say and the outs did not. I had had an in/out relationship with life already by virtue of living in a small town without having been born there (out), and various other accidents of birth and circumstance which contrive to place one IN or OUT. Of course it was sometimes possible to be so far out that one was IN.

My scout troop was poor, and instead of going to camp, we rented a cabin in the mountains and the leaders came up and a woman cooked for us and we did scout stuff and froze our asses off in the cold night high altitude air. One day, on a 15 mile hike, all sweaty and tired, we were overtaken by a group of girls on horseback, from a Chele camp, girls who did not even deign to look at us, footsore, horseless, and consigned forever to be Out Out Out on the Far Side of the Universe.

I felt tears welling up in my eyes after all these years at the awfulness of having been quickly judged and found wanting. Rejection. Very much like trying to get someone, anyone, to look at your writing. Quickly judged and found wanting and excluded. Out.

So one gets practice for life early in life and one might think that familiarity would breed contempt and that the process might get easier, but it does not. In her 80’s, my mother joined a fraternal club and was roundly snubbed, which cut her to the quick.

One thing life provides in abundance is the ability to practice sucking it up.