The Author's Journey

August 5, 2009

I am still on the phone with ______________ from Oceanview. We have agreed to disagree about blurbs, and now we’re onto the question of my web site.

I explain that I don’t have one yet, but I’m working on it, and it will be live at the end of September.

“Do you have a url?”

“Yes.”

“Oh good.” These are the first genuine-sounding words to have come out of her mouth.

She wants the url. I explain that, since the site won’t be live until end-of-September, it makes no sense to publicize the url now. We go back and forth, and finally I understand her need: She wants the url now so it can be included in printed material that won’t be distributed for a couple of months. I promise to send her the url today, and further, that the site will be live end-of-September.

“Well, if you can do it any sooner, that would be great.” I reflect that this endless pushiness would server her well in a junior position at one of the large corporations that are my clients.

We hang up with civility. The call is over, but I can’t just let the situation with the blurbs slide. (See Post No. 32.) So I immediately call my agent, Kimberly Cameron.

Help!

I reprise the conversation with __________  and confess that I was about to tell her that if the blurb issue was a deal breaker I would return my advance and go elsewhere. Kimberley is of course glad that I held my tongue, and I tell her (in truth) that it was at least partly for her sake. She has worked so hard, and long ago I promised her to be calm and reasonable with any publisher she found.

“I’ll intervene,” she says without a moment’s hesitation.

I explain that I genuinely can’t help with blurbs, and ask her if there’s something in the contract I missed.

“It’s expected,” she explains. Apparently, in the old days, publishers just turned to their stable of writers and got one or two of them to say good things about one of their compatriots. But now, it’s up to the author. She then rattles off a list of her clients. “A got seven [blurbs]. B got nine. C has eight so far.”

Okay, I get the point.

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a few weeks.

October 25, 2007

I’m just about through dealing with the edits Kimberley has suggested. Most of them are easy to handle. It is tedious plowing through the manuscript page by page to change a “he” to a “the” or “peace” to “piece” –  I am amazed at how many of these changes there are – but they’re not challenging. I use a blue highlighter to line through each change as I make it. The rule is, no blue mark on the manuscript until you can actually see the change on the screen.

To my surprise, the deeper comments are easy to handle as well. Kimberley feels one of the minor characters is too one-dimensional, and I find ways to soften her harshness and create sympathy in spite of her flaws. A new reminiscence on the hero’s part, one or two lines of dialog… small changes can make a big difference!

The final scene, the one I have promised to rewrite “half a dozen times” if necessary, is a different story. There is only so much room within the bounds of believable dialog, and two different goals are competing for that space: the need to choreograph the characters’ changing emotions as they react to one another, and the need to explain what happened and why – to tie up the loose ends. I feel like I’m assembling some complicated piece of machinery. And of course, the longer I work on it, the harder it is to see it objectively and keep track of the effect of each sentence on the reader.

Eventually, I get something that satisfies me. I hope it will satisfy Kimberley. I’m running out of gas.

*   *   *

November 6, 2007

Kimberley e-mails me to say that the manuscript is in “great shape” and there are only one or two things she wants to go over. I remind her of our agreement, which she acknowledges. “Just a couple of minor things.” We arrange a meeting at her office.

It does not go well. While there are no longer red and blue tags on every other page, there are still plenty of them, and as we go through them, my heart sinks. These are not minor corrections; they’re major changes, actually more involved than the first round. After Kimberley and Phil are through explaining them, complete with ideas like, “Couldn’t you have someone hold her at gunpoint?” I tell them that from my perspective, the meeting has had the worst possible outcome I could imagine.

Kimberley can see that I’m upset, and as I’m standing at the door about to leave she asks me in her most conciliatory tone to “just think about them,” menaing the new proposed changes. I promise to do so, but that evening my despair gradually coalesces into a hot coal of anger, and I realize that I will not change another word. I’d rather die.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

September 24, 2007

The Buckeye Roadhouse is located just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. It has been around a long time – who would name a restaurant “The Buckeye” today? – but the menu has evolved under the influence of its sophisticated Martin County customers, the ex-hippies who grew up to become therapists and contractors. We are shown to a table upstairs. “It’s quieter,” Kimberley explains.

She is acting like a literary agent from central casting. “Should we get some water? Do you prefer sparkling or calm? You know, my husband and I just got back from Barcelona last week and we had this wonderful wine… and it just happens that they have it here! I think you’ll love it, Mike.” And so on.

I am tempted by a cheeseburger, a hold-over from the Buckeye’s earlier days, I imagine, but to compliment the wine I choose a Waldorf salad instead… and it is truly delicious. Kimberley is chatty, but never veers from business topics. Her assistant Phil says little.

When the plates have been cleared away and cappuccinos served, the manuscript comes out. We are going to go over it page by page. This takes about two hours.

Kimberley is one of those people who throws herself full force into everything she does, committed to get every detail right: the  computer equipment for her employees, the  wine for lunch with the new author, the punctuation in Fortuna.

Actually, she’s done a lot more than go over the punctuation. She has indeed caught at least a hundred little mistakes in the form of typos, missing quotation marks and the like, but she has also thought very carefully bout every aspect of the book. As we go over her mark-ups page by page, she emphasizes once again that these are “suggestions.” Maybe, but some are pretty forceful.

“You just can’t have him do that.”

“You’ve got to do something about her.”

There are lots of one word notes like “motivation?” or “How does he feel?” or simply, “Why?” The fact is, I’ve just gotten three or four thousand dollars worth of free editing. At the same time, I am a little nervous because, as I see it, this is a situation where she holds all the cards. She can, for all her protestations, decide not to represent me if I don’t do what she wants, and without an agent. I can’t sell the book. That’s for sure.

I offer her a deal: I will evaluate every comment seriously and do one revision. I do not want to get into an endless back-and-forth. That’s what I do with clients who pay me $125 per hour. I also tell her I will re-write the last chapter “a dozen times” if necessary until we both agree that it’s right. I don’t feel like I’m conceding anything because her suggestions, after all is said and done, are very smart.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

September 24, 2007

Fog blows across the winding road as I climb the hill to Kimberley’s house, which is located in a town called Tiburon, once a sort of hippie enclave and now a bedroom community for wealthy individuals. I park at the top of the hill, then navigate the steps on the side of her home down to the separate structure that is the office of Reece-Halsey. There is a lovely terrace with a view of the bay, and off to the side, a large cottage with a heavy wooden door.

I knock, Kimberley opens the door and I step into a large, cozy room. There are several desks against the walls, each with a large computer monitor, and in the center a low table with two couches facing one another. Kimberley introduces one of her junior associates, an attractive blonde with the polished style it takes to rise in the corporate world: warm but professional, with no Valley Girl lilt in her voice.

The other associate, with whom I’ll also be working, is a somewhat scruffy guy named Phil Lang who is working on the project along with Kimberley. We sit down briefly and she produces the manuscript she has printed out, a ream of paper with probably two hundred little blue plastic tags sticking out of one side. My heart sinks. Kimberley had asked in her innocent way if I would be “open to a few suggestions,” and I had said yes. This looks like a massive edit.

She reads my expression. “This is your book and I respect that,” she says. “You can just take a look at our comments and see what you think.” Later on, she will tell me in passing that many agents demand edits and will only take your book on the contingency that you make the changes they want.

It occurs to me on the ride over to the restaurant that publishing has become part of what someone has called “the gig economy.” Essentially, publishers have outsourced the editing function – or much of it – to agents, who do it on spec. (The alternate, which I heard about at the San Francisco Writers’ conference, is the agent who “recommends” a copy editor prior to agreeing to represent an author.) This cuts publishers’ expenses, and the agents are willing to do it because the rewards of a big book can be huge… or because the writers aren’t the only ones in publishing who are basically in the game for love.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

My agent.

There will be two opportunities to meet agents face to face at the conference, the Friday night cocktail party and the “speed dating” sessions on Sunday, where you get three minutes in front of an agent under less-than-ideal conditions. So here I am, at the cocktail party, Chardonnay in hand (a Marketing Moment* gaff, but I don’t care), gently pushing my way through the crowd in search of Kimberley Cameron, the one and only agent I’ve seen who I think I could stand to work with.

If nothing happens with her, I wonder what I’ll do. I will go through the speed dating session on Sunday – I’m committed – but in my heart of hearts I do not want to do business with any of these other women. They seem flighty, arbitrary, unstable and lacking in self-esteem. I have had clients like this. I don’t want an agent like this.

I spot Kimberley, who also has a glass of Chardonnay in hand. She is pretty, with dark, shoulder-length hair and sparkling eyes, and a she’s a little delicate, in the way some aristocratic women are portrayed in 19^th century novels. She is wearing a loose jacket over a prim silk blouse. Prim is the overall impression she conveys, in spite of bright red lipstick.

At the moment she’s unoccupied. I quickly close the gap between us and introduce myself. In the first thirty seconds or so of small talk, it emerges that she spends about a third of her time in Paris. Taking a small risk, I switch the conversation to French . We’re both fluent, or close to it, and after a few minutes, at least on a superficial level, we have a bond.

Back in English, she asks me if I’m working on a project.

“Yes. It’s a novel about online role-playing games.”

“I love that.”

“The game itself is set in Renaissance Florence.”

“I love that.”

She wants to see the book. I explain that it’s not finished, but that I will have it done in a couple of months. She asks me to e-mail her on Monday to remind her of our conversation.

And just like that, I have accomplished my objective. I have met an agent who’s willing to read my book.

* See Post No. 10

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

May 1, 2006

My birthday is only a few days off and today, I luck out with a present I could hardly imagine. Business Week has a cover story – a cover story! – about Second Life, an online role playing game or MMORPGs that consists entirely of user-created content. 

When I initially showed the first page of Fortuna to friends, they all loved it, but several voiced the same concern: People won’t know what an avatar is. I would argue that readers could get the meaning from context, that the use of the word was part of the book’s exoticism… but in fact, I have been concerned about this.

Part of my mission, after all, is to sell the book. And the last thing I want to do is create a stumbling block for the acquisition editors. I  learned long ago that when you’re pitching a creative concept, every detail has to be perfect. In business meetings, there are always a couple of people who will focus on any possible negative, however trivial. Maybe the word “avatar” needs an asterisk. Maybe I need a little paragraph prior to the opening scene where I explain the phenomenon of MMORPGs.

I do not want to re-write the first sentence. I’m in love with it.

And now, I’m convinced I won’t have to. It’s all there – in Business Week! How non-obscure can you get?

In the second paragraph, I read, “Anshe Chung [the woman on the cover] is an avatar, or onscreeen graphic character. (My italics.) The third paragraph explains, “Second Life participants pay ‘Linden dollars,’ the game’s currency, to rent or buy virtual homesteads…. But players can convert that play money into U.S. dollars… using their credit card at online currency exchanges.” And further on, “Chung’s firm now has virtual land and currency holdings worth about $250,000 in real U.S. greenbacks.”

The real gold is in the sixth paragraph. “All told, at least 10 million people pay $15 and up a month to play these games, and maybe 20 million more log in once in a while.” That’s – count ‘em – 30 million potential readers!

Take that, ye acquisitions editors of little faith. I immediately send the online link to Kimberley, even though she hasn’t seen the book yet. Call it pre-selling.

To be continued…

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February 2, 2006

Before you get published, you have to write the book. The whole book. At least, if it’s a novel you do. This wasn’t always true. You used to be able to get away with a “treatment” – three chapters and an outline – but those days are long gone.

Today, if you want to sell a book you need an agent, and agents want to see that book.

I’m not worried about finding an agent yet. I’m worried that my idea, when fleshed out with words, won’t be long enough. If you ask literary agents or acquisition editors how long a novel should be, they will, to a person, answer with the same joke: “The length of a novel is like the length of a skirt. It should be long enough to cover everything, but short enough to be interesting.” Hahaha. I go to a book store and start estimating the number of words in best-selling novels. I started with Dan Brown’s The da Vince Code. Why aim low? My estimate, based on counting the number of words in a line, lines on a page, etc. comes out to over 120,000 words.

I freak out.

I go through the same process with three other thrillers, and come to the conclusion that, worst case, if I end up with 75,000 words I’ll be okay.  Anything less won’t have the heft of a real book – which means I have 50,882 words to go.

*  *  *

February 4, 2006

Saturday morning. I am sitting in the Berkeley Espresso Café, drinking a double cappuccino while writing down a list of every scene in the book that I can think of. I use two pens: blue for the ones I have already written, red for the ones I anticipate: the scene where Jason becomes convinced that his best friend Marco is also playing Fortuna. The scene where his girlfriend Paola talks about her uncle, setting up credibility for future events. The last scene in the book…. Then I do the math. If each scene is 500 words long, then I need 150 scenes. But, between many of the scenes there’s going to be an intercut – snippets from the fictional “developer’s guide” to Fortuna, newspaper articles, even an excerpt from a term paper. So I don’t really need 150 scenes. And some of the scenes, perhaps most of them, will be longer than 500 words.

I have outlined 78 scenes. I think I am in the ballpark. Kind of.

To be continued…

This blog is about getting published. It’s not a set of instructions about how to get published. It’s the story of how one person actually did get published. Me. And like my novel, Fortuna   (OceanView Publishing, May 3, 2010), I’m going to start in the middle of the story. My future posts will be in chronological order, from the moment of inspiration (there was one) to the launch party and beyond.

Picture a large ballroom in a relatively elegant San Francisco hotel filled with aspiring authors. They are seated at large, round tables, eight to a table, and they look good, some conventional but stylish, some hip but not scraggly. I have chatted with many of them and they are, by and large, pretty interesting people, with impressive ideas for books. The age range is from college to seventy-something.

At the moment, their attention is directed towards a stage where about a dozen literary agents are explaining what sorts of manuscripts they are interested in seeing. All but one are women, all but two from New York. They are, judging from their presentations, a collection of hard-edged, arrogant, caustic individuals who are reveling in their position of power as gatekeepers to The Land of the Published. I keep telling myself that they have very hard jobs, suffer constant rejection, probably have trouble making their rent some months… but all of this does not maker them less odious.

I say to myself, I cannot play this game. But then the inner dialog continues. I remind myself that I paid $550 dollars to attend the 2007 San Francisco Writers Conference, that I knew going in there would be a moment when I had to confront the incredibly competitive nature of the publishing industry, that perseverance was part of the process. But the only part of the dialog I can really hear was “f**k this.”

The presentations are half over. I am assiduously trying to take notes, but it is difficult to keep the names straight, connect their faces with the photographs in the conference program, scribble things like “thrillers,” or “no sci-fi” in the margins, all the while fighting the urge to get up and walk out. And then, Kimberley Cameron, the woman who will eventually become my agent and through amazing persistence sell my book, comes to the podium.

To be continued…